Electronic States of a Shallow Hydrogenic Donor Impurity in Different Shaped Semiconductor Quantum Wells

The shallow hydrogenic donor impurity states in square, V-shaped, and parabolic quantum wells are studied in the framework of effective-mass envelope-function theory using the plane wave basis. The first four impurity energy levels and binding energy of the ground state are more easily calculated than with the variation method. The calculation results indicate that impurity energy levels decrease withthe increase of the well width and decrease quickly when the well width is small.The binding energy of the ground state increases until it reaches a maximum value,and then decreases as the well width increases. The results are meaningful andcan be widely applied in the design of various optoelectronic devices.