Effective mobility for sequential carrier transport in multiple quantum well structures

We investigate a theoretical model for effective carrier mobility to comprehensively describe the behavior of the perpendicular carrier transport across multiple quantum well (MQW) structures under applied electric field. The analytical expressions of effective mobilities for thermionic emission, direct tunneling, and thermally assisted tunneling are derived based on the quasithermal equilibrium approximation and the semiclassical approach. Effective electron and hole mobilities in InGaAs/GaAsP MQWs predicted from our model are in good agreement with the experimental results obtained from the carrier time-of-flight measurement near room temperature. With this concept, the complicated carrier dynamics inside MQWs can be simplified to an effective mobility, an equivalent parameter that is more straightforward to handle and can be easily incorporated in the conventional drift-diffusion model.