Novel and interesting effects in semiconductors that arise from the quantization of the energy levels of charge carriers (electrons and positive holes) confined to potential wells of very small dimensions are under intense investigation. Three regimes can be considered depending on whether the potential wells are small in one, two, or three dimensions. For the latter, the systems under study consist primarily of colloidal semiconductor particles suspended in a liquid matrix. Two-dimensional systems have also been prepared and are called quantum wires. However, the vast majority of work on quantum size effects has been done on one-dimensional systems in the form of multiple quantum wells (MQW) and superlattices (SL). We repogrzt results on superlattices used as photoelectrodes in photoelectrochemical (PEC) cells and on small quantized semiconductor particles in the form of colloids.

Date Published: 11 August 1987
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 0792, Quantum Well and Superlattice Physics, (11 August 1987); doi: 10.1117/12.940845

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 0792:
Quantum Well and Superlattice Physics
Gottfried H. Doehler; Joel N. Schulman, Editor(s)