Accounting for Interelectronic Interaction in the Calculation of Hysteresis Phenomena of Current Transfer in the Channel of Gallium Arsenide Resonant Tunneling Diodes

When designing devices operating in the terahertz range based on resonant tunneling structures with an operating point in the region of negative differential conductivity, serious problems arise in predicting the current–voltage characteristics of such structures. In this work, the problem of predicting the current–voltage characteristics of resonant tunneling diodes in the area of negative differential conductivity for signal conversion devices is solved. A method for calculating the hysteresis on the current–voltage characteristics of resonant tunneling diodes is proposed. The developed model differs from the previously used approaches by the use of the stationary version of the wave function formalism to describe the hysteresis, while the nonstationary equations of the Wigner function formalism or quantum hydrodynamics were previously used. It is shown that the hysteresis is a consequence of the interelectronic interaction in the quantum channel of the resonant tunneling structure, which can be taken into account by using the self-consistent field method. Three types of initial conditions for the system of Schrödinger–Poisson equations are considered and it is shown that the appearance of the hysteresis in the current–voltage characteristics of resonant tunneling diodes is achieved by applying special initial conditions in the self-consistency procedure. It was found that the hysteresis manifests itself in the stationary case of a constant voltage, which can be predicted by varying the initial conditions during the self-consistency procedure.