A resonant-tunnelling electron wavesplitter

We propose an electron wavesplitter, which employs resonant tunnelling through a quantum well between electron waveguides to transfer part of the electrons in one waveguide to another. The device consists of one input and two output waveguides coupled through a symmetric barrier-well-barrier system. Maximum resonant tunnelling of electrons through the well is achieved by adjusting the direct current voltage across the well so as to align the incident energy (<the barrier height) with the energy level in the well. The mode-matching method is adopted in the two-dimensional numerical calculations. The results show that transmission from one arm to another reaches sharp peaks (half-width−4 eV) at certain energies. © 1994 IOP Publishing Ltd.