Magneto-coupling effect on surface electron states in a semi-infinite superlattice

Abstract

A theoretical study, within the effective-mass approximation, on the coupling effects of applied magnetic fields along the growth direction of the superlattice on the surface electron states in a semi-infinite semiconductor superlattice is presented by using an effective-barrier height method. The coupling effect is necessarily considered when the difference of the electron effective masses between different materials cannot be neglected. Our numerical results show that the magneto-coupling effect brings about not only the splitting of the surface electron levels but also the definite dependence of the surface levels and its localization degree on magnetic fields and Landau indices. Our results also indicate that the imaginary component of Bloch wave number can serve as a measure of the localization degree of the surface electron states.