Bleaching effect of illumination on the vertical hot-electron transport

A striking effect of illumination on the vertical nonequilibrium electron transport has been observed in the GaAs-based tunneling hot electron transfer amplifier (THETA). Weak illumination can considerably increase the transparency of a THETA structure for quasi-ballistic electrons if the photon energy exceeds the GaAs band gap. The temperature and illumination intensity dependences indicate that the effect is caused by photo-neutralization of ionized acceptors which are a major source of hot electron scattering. © 1992.