Electron waveguiding characteristics and ballistic current capacity of semiconductor quantum slabs

Semiconductor slab electron waveguides with and without spatially varying effective mass are analyzed using the single-band effective-mass equation. Starting with ballistic electron incidence on a potential energy/effective mass interface, expressions for the phase shift, the lateral shift, and the time delay upon total internal reflection are found. It is shown that heterostructure wells, homostructure voltage-induced wells, and heterostructure barriers can act as waveguides for ballistic electrons, and that the waveguiding is described by a single dispersion relation. The guided mode wave functions, dispersion curves, cutoffs, group velocity. effective mass, density of states, and ballistic guided current density are determined