Spin-dependent resonant tunneling in double-barrier magnetic heterostructures

A. G. Petukhov, D. O. Demchenko, and A. N. Chantis

Citation: Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology B 18, 2109 (2000); doi: 10.1116/1.1305332
View online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1116/1.1305332
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Spin-dependent resonant tunneling in double-barrier magnetic

heterostructures
A. G. Petukhov,a) D. O. Demchenko, and A. N. Chantis
Physics Department, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, Rapid City, South Dakota 57701-3995

Received 17 January 2000; accepted 4 May 2000

Recent advances in molecular beam epitaxial growth made it possible to fabricate exotic
heterostructures comprised of magnetic films or buried layers ErAs,Gax Mn1x As integrated with
conventional semiconductors GaAs and to explore quantum transport in these heterostructures. It
is particularly interesting to study spin-dependent resonant tunneling in double-barrier resonant
tunneling diodes RTDs with magnetic elements such as GaAs/AlAs/ErAs/AlAs/GaAs and
GaAs/AlAs/GaxMn1x As/AlAs/GaAs. We present the results of our theoretical studies and
computer simulations of transmission coefficients and current-voltage characteristics of RTDs based
on these double-barrier structures. In particular, resonant tunneling of holes in the
Gax Mn1x As-based RTDs is considered. Our approach is based on k"p perturbation theory with
exchange splitting effects taken into account. 2000 American Vacuum Society.
S0734-211X0004604-7
I. INTRODUCTION
Resonant tunneling RT of charge carriers through semiconductor double-barrier heterostructures DBH has been
extensively investigated both experimentally and theoretically since the pioneering work of Tsu and Esaki.1 Currently,
resonant tunneling diodes RTDs are being used in a variety
of applications such as high-speed switching, high-speed signal generation, static random access memory, etc. see Ref. 2
and references therein. Recent advances in molecular beam
epitaxy made it possible to fabricate RTDs containing magnetic materials such as ErAs or Gax Mn1x As as their active
elements.3,4 Introducing the magnetosensitive elements in
these semiconductor devices can greatly enhance their functionality. For instance, recently discovered magnetizationcontrolled RT in GaAs/ErAs RTDs3 has remarkable features
such as splitting and enhancement of the resonant channels,
which depend on the orientation of the external magnetic
field with respect to the interface. Quantum transport in magnetic RTDs essentially involves the hole states of either ErAs
or Gax Mn1x As. In this work we will explore hole resonant
tunneling in the presence of magnetization.

II. METHODS OF CALCULATIONS

A. Exchange field

The k"p method has been successfully applied by many

authors to simulations of quantum transport in conventional
GaAs/AlAs RTDs.2 For instance, it was used in Refs. 57 to
interpret experimental data of Mendez et al.8 on resonant
tunneling of holes in GaAs/AlGaAs DBH. The method is
particularly useful for analyzing spin-dependent RT in
semiconductor-based magnetic heterostructures. Our goal is
to analyze spin-dependent quantum transport in GaMnAsbased magnetic heterostructures and devices, taking into account both the band structure and magnetization effects.
a

Electronic mail: andre@odessa.phy.sdsmt.edu

2109

J. Vac. Sci. Technol. B 184, JulAug 2000

The first step is to construct a k-dependent magnetizationinduced exchange operator acting on the upper valence states
of a magnetic semiconductor or semimetal. In order to generate the exchange Hamiltonian matrix from the firstprinciple calculations for the materials described by the
KohnLuttinger model, we will follow the procedure outlined in Ref. 9. In the absence of the spin-orbit interaction,
the application of the k"p method results in the two sets of
the upper valence bands described by the following Hamiltonians in units of 2 /2m 0 ) for spin up and spin down
hole states, respectively,
,
, 2
,
2 2
2 2
H , ,
0 1 4 2 k 6 2 L x k x L y k y

L z2 k z2 12 ,
3 k x k y L x L y k x k z L x L z
k y k z L y L z ,

where L are 33 matrices of the angular momentum 1,

L L are their anticommutators, and i are the Luttinger
parameters. The auxiliary Luttinger parameters ,
0 describe
Zeeman splitting at the center of the Brillouin zone while the
are responsible for an additional
other six parameters ,
i
Zeeman splitting due to the magnetization-induced difference in the effective masses of the spin up and spin down
hole states. In the presence of the magnetization the total
Hamiltonian of the hole states in a dilute magnetic semiconductor or paramagnetic semimetal can be represented as
HH IH b soL ,

where H are given by 1 where the superscripts ,

are changed for ;

i ( i i )/2, I is the 22 unit
matrix, and L are the Pauli and orbital momentum vector
operators, respectively; b is the unit vector in the direction of
the magnetization. The second term in Eq. 2 describes the
exchange field induced by magnetization. In combination
with the third, spin-orbital term it is responsible for any
magneto-electronic effects in magnetically active elements
of the structures in question.
As an illustration of this approach we will consider the
upper valence band structure of an ErAs quantum well in the

0734-211X200018421095$17.00

2000 American Vacuum Society

2109

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2110

Petukhov, Demchenko, and Chantis: Spin-dependent resonant tunneling

2110

where terms in the sum are always enumerated in such way

that the first four of them correspond to the probability density current form left to right while the next four terms are
their right-to-left counterparts, E b EV b , and k z can
be found from the secular equation
det H k ,k z E b 10,

which is nothing but a multiband analog of the simple relation k z 2mE b for the ordinary one-band tunneling problem. Once k z are known, the eigenvectors v(k z ) can be
found from
H(2) k z2 H(1) k k z H(0) k E b 1 v0,

FIG. 1. Angular dependence of the Zeeman splitting in mega-electron-volts

of the light hole channel in the ErAs-based DBH with 10 ML quantum well.

presence of magnetization induced by external magnetic

fields of different orientations. Figure 1 shows experimental
data, obtained for n GaAs/AlAs/ErAs/Als/n GaAs RTDs
with 10 ML ErAs quantum well,10 grown in the 311 direction, that are compared with our theoretical results. As we
already mentioned, the experiments on RT through ErAs
quantum wells revealed strong Zeeman splitting of the resonant channel corresponding to the light hole LH state in the
quantum well. This splitting also strongly depends on the
orientation of the magnetization with respect to the interface.
The theoretical curves were calculated by means of the
Hamiltonian 2 with the parameters fitted to the results of
the first-principle linear-muffin-tin orbital LMTO
calculations11 and k 2 /10a, where a is the ErAs lattice
constant in the 311 direction. Qualitative behavior of the
theoretical curves is very similar to that of the experimental
data. There is, however, a systematic quantitative discrepancy which requires further investigation.

As a next step, we represent our DBH as a stack of N

1 flatband regions and, therefore N interfaces between
them. Then we will apply the transfer matrix technique2 to
calculate the transmission coefficient and tunneling current.
This technique requires solving the Schrodinger equation in
each flatband region with subsequent matching of these solutions at each interface. We will restrict further consideration to the case of 44 KohnLuttinger Hamiltonian describing the LH and heavy hole HH states only. In each
flatband region with potential V b the wave function of a hole
with energy E is a superposition of the eight plane-wave or
evanescent solutions
8

where we represented the Hamiltonian matrix 2 as a second

order polinomial in k z . Direct application of Eqs. 4 and
5, known as the complex band structure method, is rather
inconvenient and inefficient from the numerical point of
view. It can be used efficiently only if the analytical solutions k z, (E b ) and v(k z, ) are available.12 In fact, it was used
by Wessel and Altarelli5 for the Hamiltonian 2 with zero
exchange field. Clearly, this method is not suitable for our
purposes. Instead, we will follow an approach suggested in
Ref. 7. We will treat Eq. 5 as generalized eigenvalue problem with k z being the eigenvalues in question.13 This problem can be reduced to a regular eigenvalue problem for the
non-Hermitian matrix:

0
H

(2) 1

k z

H k E b 1

(0)

1
H

(2) 1

H k
(1)

k zv

k zv

which, in turn, can be solved by means of the standard numerical routines. Here 1 is a 44 unit matrix and 0 is a 4
4 zero matrix. The knowledge of k z and v(k z ) for certain
E and k allows us to formulate boundary conditions at each
interface.

C. Boundary conditions and tunneling current

B. Flatband solution of the Schrodinger equation

z A v k z exp ik z z ,

The boundary conditions can be formulated by means of

the following standard conventions:14 i the difference in the
Bloch amplitudes at the heterointerface is neglected, i.e., the
envelope function is continuous across the interface; ii the
current associated with this envelope function is also continuous. It can be shown that within the framework of k"p
method the current density operator can be expressed in
terms of H(i) and k z as follows:6,15
Jz

1
2H(2) k z H(1) .

By applying the boundary conditions step by step at each

interface from right to left we can express the amplitudes of
the transmitted waves t through the amplitudes of the incoming a and reflected r waves

J. Vac. Sci. Technol. B, Vol. 18, No. 4, JulAug 2000

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2111

Petukhov, Demchenko, and Chantis: Spin-dependent resonant tunneling

2111

FIG. 2. Total transmission coefficient

as a function of energy for GaMnAsbased DBH and k 0.02 1 , 0.
Dashed linezero magnetization,
solid linesaturated magnetization.

MR1 z j ML z j
jN

a
r

M11 M12
M21 M22

a
r

,
8

where vectors t, a, and r are four-component columns, and

MR,L (z j ) are 88 matrices evaluated at right and left sides
of the interface j, respectively. They are comprised of the
columns corresponding to different eigenvalues k z :
M z j

v k z exp ik z z j
Jz k z v k z exp ik z z j

where E F is the Fermi energy in the emitter and U is bias

applied to the DBH. In our calculations, the potential of the
biased structure is assumed to be constant within the limits
of each flatband region and is taken as the average over this
region. All our actual calculations are restricted to the simplest case when a DBH is modeled with the five flatband
regions corresponding to a semi-infinite emitter and collector, two finite barriers, and a quantum well.

In Eq. 8 the transfer matrix M, which is the product of

matrices M, is partitioned into four 44 subblocks. It allows
us to eliminate the reflection amplitudes
t M11M12 M22 1 M21 aM a.

10

The transmission coefficient T between the incoming

wave and the transmitted wave is

Re vR Jz vR
Re vL Jz vL
0,

M 2 ,

if Re vL Jz vL 0

otherwise

.
11

Finally, the tunneling current density at zero temperature

can be calculated as an integral over k and energy E 16 :
j

min(E F eU,0)

EF

dE

dk

T k ,E,eU ,
, 1

12

FIG. 3. Tunneling current as a function of bias for various positions of the

Fermi energy levels dashed linezero magnetization, solid linesaturated
magnetization.

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2112

Petukhov, Demchenko, and Chantis: Spin-dependent resonant tunneling

2112

FIG. 4. Differential conductance as a

function of bias for the GaMnAsbased DBH for E F 0.054 eV
dashed linezero magnetization,
solid linesaturated magnetization.
HH2 and HH3 channels are clearly
split.

III. RESULTS
Here we present the results of our calculations of the
transmission coefficients and tunneling currentvoltage
(I V) characteristics of hypothetical p-GaAs/AlAs/
Gax Mn1x As/AlAs/p-GaAs RTDs. As a first example, we
will consider the transmission coefficient of the DBH with
10 -wide AlAs barriers and a 50 wide Ga0.99Mn0.01As
quantum well. Figure 2 shows the total transmission coefficient of the structure in question at zero bias for zero dashed
line and saturated solid line magnetization in the quantum
well, which is perpendicular to the layers. Parameters of the
exchange field were determined in accordance with Sec.
II A, i.e., they were fitted to the results of first-principle
LMTO calculations.17 Electronic states in the quantum well
define a very sharp structure i.e., the sequence of peaks and
valleys of the transmission coefficient. Also, there is a very
pronounced Zeeman splitting of the HH channels and the
first light hole channel LH1. Zeeman splitting of the HH
(m j 3/2) channels is much larger than that of the LH (m j
1/2) channels. Also, mixing of the LH and HH channels is
quite substantial due to the fact that k 0.7,9
It is interesting to see how this quite pronounced structure
of the transmission coefficient including Zeeman splittings
manifests itself in the I V characteristics. Figure 3 shows I
V characteristics of three RTDs, based on the DBH described
earlier, for three different doping levels of the p-type emitter.
Zeeman splittings of the resonant channels can be clearly
seen in the I V characteristics of the first RTD with E F
0.005 eV. The impact of magnetization is still quite dramatic for another RTD with a higher doping level (E F
0.015 eV. For the third RTD, however, E F 0.054
eV and the magnetization induced effects are rather modest.
They can be revealed only in the differential conductance

dI/dV versus voltage characteristics see Fig. 4.

There is no surprise that both high values of the Fermi
level and complex character of the band structure of the
emitter make it difficult to observe a distinct RT structure
and, particularly, magnetization controlled RT. On the other
hand, the RTDs with the low concentration of holes in the
emitter, for which the effects of magnetization are quite significant, will have relatively low current densities. One of the
possible alternatives providing for the observation of stronger magnetization controlled effects would be fabrication of
structures, utilizing interband spin-dependent RT, similar to
those used in ErAs experiments.3,10
A comment is in order as to the likely effect of electrostatic band bending and internal electric fields, not accounted
for here, on the calculated I V curves. The primary effect
will consist in additional shifting and broadening of the resonant peaks. We believe, however, that the basic spindependent features of the heterostructures, considered in the
present work, will not be strongly affected. We are planning
to address these issues along with the strain effects in a separate article.17 We are also planning to investigate additional
spin splitting caused by the internal electric field in the quantum well Rashba effect.18,19
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was supported by AFOSR Grant No. F4962096-1-0383.
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