Physics and applications of resonant tunneling devices

This thesis addresses several important issues of the physics and applications of double barrier resonant tunneling devices on which the author worked during his graduate study at Caltech: (1) Epitaxial growth of AlAs/GaAs double barrier resonant tunneling structure on both GaAs and Si substrate (Chapter 2). (2) Investigation of terahertz modulation of resonant tunneling effect (Chapter 3). (3) Study of the imaginary potential in double barrier resonant tunneling (Chapter 4). (4) Development of the first series of optical resonant tunneling devices and parallel resonant tunneling (Chapter 5).; The history of the development of double barrier resonant tunneling and the basic theory are also discussed (Chapter 1).