(c) Dr Paul Kinsler. [Acknowledgements & Feedback]
This is part of an information maze -- see the index-file for the full picture.
A quantum well is a potential well that is very small. This "well" is like a box in which particles can be trapped, in much the same way that light can be trapped between mirrors. By making layers of different semiconductor material, it is possible to make particular layers act as traps for excitons or carriers. These trapped particles are in quantum-confinement.
The quantum confinement effects restrict what the carriers can do. In a quantum-well, they can move freely sideways in the plane of the layer, but are confined in the forwards-backwards direction. For any particular sideways speed, there could now be several different ways in which the carrier is confined in the layer. These quantum wells have many useful properties because we can engineer the forward-backward confinement exactly, and because they are relatively easy to make. As a result they are now widely used to make semiconductor lasers and other useful devices.
We can take this quantum-confinement further and make semiconductor-structures which are quantum-wires and quantum-dots.
XINDEX: semiconductor-structure, semiconductor-structure, quantum-wire, quantum-dot, polariton, index-file.
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XKEYWORD: quantum-well
Email Feedback: Dr.Paul.Kinsler@physics.org
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