Photoluminescence investigation of two-dimensional electron gas in an undoped AlxGa1-xN/GaN heterostructure

Low-temperature photoluminescence measurement is performed on an undoped AlxGa1-xN/GaN heterostructure. Temperature-dependent Hall mobility confirms the formation of two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) near the heterointerface. A weak photoluminescence (PL) peak with the energy of similar to 79meV lower than the free exciton (FE) emission of bulk GaN is related to the radiative recombination between electrons confined in the triangular well and the holes near the flat-band region of GaN. Its identification is supported by the solution of coupled one-dimensional Poisson and Schrodinger equations. When the temperature increases, the red shift of the 2DEG related emission peak is slower than that of the FE peak. The enhanced screening effect coming from the increasing 2DEG concentration and the varying electron distribution at two lowest subbands as a function of temperature account for such behaviour.

Spin-polarized transport of two-dimensional electron gas embedded in a diluted magnetic semiconductor

The spin-polarized transport property of a diluted magnetic semiconductor two-dimensional electron gas is investigated theoretically at low temperature. A large current polarization can be found in this system even at small magnetic fields and oscillates with increasing magnetic field while the carrier polarization is vanishingly small. The magnitude as well as the sign of the current polarization can be tuned by varying magnetic field, the electron density and the Mn concentration. (c) 2005 American Institute of Physics.

Weak anti-localization in InAlAs/InGaAs/InAlAs high mobility two-dimensional electron gas systems

Magneto-transport measurements have been carried out on three heavily Si delta-doped In-0.52 Al-0.48 As/In-0.53 Ga-0.47 As/In-0.52 A(10.48) As single quantum well samples in which two subbands were occupied by electrons. The weak anti-localization (WAL) has been found in such high electron mobility systems. The strong Rashba spin-orbit (SO) coupling is due to the high structure inversion asymmetry (SIA) of the quantum wells. Since the WAL theory model is so complicated in fitting our experimental results, we obtained the Rashba SO coupling constant alpha and the zero-field spin splitting Delta(0) by an approximate approach. The results are consistent with that obtained by the Shubnikov-de Haas (SdH) oscillation analysis. The WAL effect in high electron mobility system suggests that finding a useful approach for deducing alpha and Delta(0) is important in designing future spintronics devices that utilize the Rashba SO coupling.

Mode softening in charge-density excitations of a two-dimensional electron gas driven by Rashba spin-orbit interaction

The electron density response of a uniform two-dimensional (2D) electron gas is investigated in the presence of a perpendicular magnetic field and Rashba spin-orbit interaction (SOI). It is found that, within the Hartree-Fock approximation, a charge density excitation mode below the cyclotron resonance frequency shows a mode softening behavior, when the spin-orbit coupling strength falls into a certain interval. This mode softening indicates that the ground state of an interacting uniform 2D electron gas may be driven by the Rashba SOI to undergo a phase transition to a nonuniform charge density wave state.

Charge-density and spin-density excitations in a two-dimensional electron gas with Rashba spin-orbit coupling

We study theoretically the charge-density and spin-density excitations in a two-dimensional electron gas in the presence of a perpendicular magnetic field and a Rashba type spin-orbit coupling. The dispersion and the corresponding intensity of excitations in the vicinity of cyclotron resonance frequency are calculated within the framework of random phase approximation. The dependence of excitation dispersion on various system parameters, i.e., the Rashba spin-orbit interaction strength, the electron density, the Zeeman spin splitting, and the Coulomb interaction strength is investigated.

Spectral dependence of spin photocurrent and current-induced spin polarization in an InGaAs/InAlAs two-dimensional electron gas

The converse effects of spin photocurrent and current induced spin polarization are experimentally demonstrated in a two-dimensional electron gas system with Rashba spin splitting. Their consistency with the strength of the Rashba coupling as measured for the same system from beating of the Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations reveals a unified picture for the spin photocurrent, current-induced spin-polarization, and spin-orbit coupling. In addition, the observed spectral inversion of the spin photocurrent indicates a system with dominating structure inversion asymmetry.

Magnetotransport in two-dimensional electron gas: The interplay between spin-orbit interaction and Zeeman splitting

We investigate theoretically the interplay between Zeeman splitting, Rashba spin-orbit interaction (RSOI), and Dresselhaus spin-orbit interaction (DSOI) and its influence on the magnetotransport property of two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) at low temperature. Our theoretical results show that the nodes of the beating patterns of the magnetoresistivity rho(xx) for 2DEG with RSOI or DSOI alone depend sensitively on the total spin splitting induced by these three spin splitting mechanisms. It is interesting to find that the eigenstates in the presence of RSOI alone are connected with those in the presence of DSOI alone but with opposite Zeeman splitting by a time-reversal transformation. Consequently, the magnetoresistivities exhibit exactly the same oscillation patterns for these two cases. For strong RSOI or DSOI alone, the magneto-oscillation of rho(xx) shows two distinct periods. For 2DEG with both RSOI and DSOI, the beating patterns vanish for equal RSOI and DSOI strengths and vanishing Zeeman splitting. They will appear again, however, when Zeeman splitting or the difference between RSOI and DSOI strengths increases.

Blocking of the polaron effect and spin-split cyclotron resonance in a two-dimensional electron gas

Cyclotron resonance (CR) of high density GaAs quantum wells exhibits well-resolved spin splitting above the LO-phonon frequency. The spin-up and spin-down CR frequencies are reversed relative to the order expected from simple band nonparabolicity. We demonstrate that this is a consequence of the blocking of the polaron interaction which is a sensitive function of the filling of the Landau levels.

Short range scattering mechanism of type-II GaSb/GaAs quantum dots on the transport properties of two-dimensional electron gas

We have studied the scattering process of AlGaAs/GaAs two-dimensional electron gas with the nearby embedded GaSb/GaAs type-II quantum dots (QDs) at low temperature. Quantum Hall effect and Shubnikov-de Haas oscillation were performed to measure the electron density n(2D), the transport lifetime tau(t) and the quantum lifetime tau(q) under various biased gate voltage. By comparing measured results of QDs sample with that of reference sample without embedded QDs, mobilities (transport mobility mu(t) and quantum mobility mu(q)) dominated by GaSb QDs scattering were extracted as functions of n(2D). It was found that the ratios of tau(t) to tau(q) were varying within the range of 1-4, implying the scattering mechanism belonging to the sort of short-range interaction. In the framework of Born approximation, a scattering model considering rectangular-shaped potential with constant barrier height was successfully applied to explain the transport experimental data. In addition, an oscillating ratio of tau(t)/tau(q) with the increasing n(2D) was predicted in the model.

Cyclotron resonance and quantum Hall effect studies of the two-dimensional electron gas confined at the GaN/AlGaN interface

We report on high magnetic fields (up to 40 T) cyclotron resonance, quantum Hall effect and Shubnikov-de-Hass measurements in high frequency transistors based on Si-doped GaN-AlGaN heterojunctions. A simple way of precise modelling of the cyclotron absorption in these heterojunctions is presented, We clearly establish two-dimensional electrons to be the dominant conducting carriers and determine precisely their in-plane effective mass to be 0.230 +/- 0.005 of the free electron effective mass. The increase of the effective mass with an increase of two-dimensional carrier density is observed and explained by the nonparabolicity effect. (C) 1997 American Institute of Physics.

Shubnikov de Haas oscillations of a two-dimensional electron gas in a modulation-doped Zn0.80Cd0.20Se/ZnS0.06Se0.94 single quantum well

The magnetotransport properties of the two-dimensional (2D) electron gas confined in a modulation-doped Zn0.80Cd0.20Se/ZnS0.06Se0.94 single quantum well structure were studied at temperatures down to 0.35 K in magnetic fields up to 7.5 T. Well resolved 2D Shubnikovde Haas (SdH) oscillations were observed, although the conductivity of the sample in the as grown state was dominated by a bulk parallel conduction layer. After removing most of the parallel conduction layer by wet chemical etching the amplitude and number of SdH oscillations increased. From the temperature dependence of the amplitude the effective mass of the electrons was estimated as 0.17 m(0). Copyright (C) 1996 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd