Experimental Determination of E−k Relationship in Electron Tunneling

Abstract

We report here measurements of electron tunneling through thin AlN films in which the imaginary component of the propagation vector in the forbidden band has been determined as a function of energy from the dependence of the tunneling current upon insulator thickness. The relationship so derived agrees well with Franz's empirical relationship for a material with the 4.2-eV forbidden-band energy of AlN. These results allow the prediction of voltage-current characteristics over the entire range of experimental variables with no arbitrary adjustable parameters, and also subject to several internal self-consistency checks. In each case complete consistency is observed, To the authors' knowledge, this represents the first unambiguous demonstration of such consistency in thin-film tunneling.

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