AMaSiS 2021 - Abstract

Thayil, Abel

Landscape approach to quantum transport through a disordered or random potential

École Polytechnique, France

Accounting for the effects of disorder in semiconductor devices, especially carrier localization, is a real challenge as it requires to compute quantum effects at the nanoscale in devices where the overall dimensions are typically of the order of 100 nm or more. The localization landscape theory, introduced first in 2012 and later applied to nitride-based alloys, enables us to account for such effects. In this theory, an effective potential (the reciprocal of the landscape) predicts the regions of localization of the eigenstates, their corresponding energies, and more globally the local density of states without having to explicitly solve the Schrödinger equation. We present here a model for electronic transport based on that theory. We detail the mathematical structure of this model which incorporates hopping between the localized states, and then analyze numerical simulations of transport in disordered semiconductor alloys.