Abstract
The purpose of this lecture is to describe the optical properties of short period superlattices. Optical properties have been known to represent the electronic properties of the semiconductors and thus the energy band structures have been probed by measuring the optical properties. This procedure, especially modulated reflectance spectroscopy, has been successfully used to determine the energy band structures of bulk semiconductors, such as Ge, Si, GaAs, GaP, and so on (Cardona, 1969; Seraphin, 1972; Aspnes, 1980). As is well known, molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) enables us to produce various kinds of semiconductor structures such as quantum wells (QWs), superlattices (SLs), and heterojunction devices. These new structures modify the electronic structures by using energy band discontinuity at the interfaces. Therefore their optical and electrical properties are modified in the heterostructures (Ando et al., 1982). For example, electronic states are quantized to form subband structures in QW structures and minibands in SLs, resulting in uniqueness of their density of states, and thus optical properties are quite different from those of bulk materials.
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Hamaguchi, C., Matsuoka, T., Taniguchi, K. (1991). Optical Properties of Short Period Superlattices. In: Ferry, D.K., Barker, J.R., Jacoboni, C. (eds) Granular Nanoelectronics. NATO ASI Series, vol 251. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-3689-9_29
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