Stark effect on confined impurities in semiconductor multi-quantum-well structures

Abstract We report the first observation of electric field effects on the electronic states of shallow impurities confined in semiconductor quantum wells. Low temperature, far infrared magnetospectroscopy of the ground state to first excited state transitions of hydrogenic donors in fields up to 9T has been carried out on a p-“i”-n diode with the “i” region consisting of 20 wide (500A) well-center-doped GaAs quantum wells separated by 200A Al 0.3 Ga 0.7 As barriers. The transition energy decreases dramatically with increasing electric field strength; a shift of ∼ 28 cm −1 in an electric field of 2.3 × 10 4 V/cm is observed, corresponding to a tunability of 75% of the zero magnetic field transition energy. Results are in good agreement with a variational calculation.