Electron relaxation and mobility in the inverted band quantum well CdTe/Hg₁₋xCdxTe/CdTe

Abstract

Electron relaxation processes at nitrogen temperatures in CdTe/Hg₁₋xCdxTe/CdTe quantum well (QW) with an inverted band structure is modelled. In this structure, scattering by longitudinal optical phonons, charged impurities, acoustic phonons and interfaces were taken into account. It was found that for undoped and lightly doped QWs (concentration of background n-type charged impurities in the well is 10¹⁴ – 10¹⁶ cm-³ or less), for x close to the band inversion value 0.16, the electron mobility grows considerably when the QW width decreases. This mobility is higher for samples with smaller concentrations of charged impurities.