Charging effects in the ac conductance of a double barrier resonant tunneling structure

Abstract

There have been many studies of the linear response ac conductance of a double barrier resonant tunneling structure (DBRTS). While these studies are important, they fail to self-consistently include the effect of time dependent charge density in the well. In this paper, we calculate the ac conductance by including the effect of time dependent charge density in the well in a self-consistent manner. The charge density in the well contributes to both the flow of displacement currents and the time dependent potential in the well. We find that including these effects can make a significant difference to the ac conductance and the total ac current is not equal to the average of non-selfconsitently calculated conduction currents in the two contacts, an often made assumption. This is illustrated by comparing the results obtained with and without the effect of the time dependent charge density included properly.