Thomas Ihn

Semiconductor Nanostructures
Fall 2017

Solutions 6 released: 25.10.2016

Topic: Electrostatics, Screening discussed: 01.11.2016

Problem 1 – Force Vectors

The problem can be solved by using the concept of mirror charges and then summing
up the different Coulomb-forces. Fig. 1 shows the corresponding sketch.

d
y

II

Figure 1: Schematic of problem 1.

As the whole problem is mirror-symmetric, it is sufficient to only consider electron

II. As further only the force along x is of interest, the mirror charge of electron II can
be neglected. There are two resulting forces. The first is the repulsion by the first
electron:

1 |e|2
Frep =
4π0 x2

The second force is the attraction by the mirror charge of the first electron:

1 |e|2
|Fatt | =
4π0 x2 + (2d)2

By projecting the force to the x-axis and considering that it is attractive, the correspond-
ing component can be extracted:

x
Fatt,x = −|Fatt | p
x2 + (2d)2
Problem 1 – Green’s Function

The problem can alternatively be solved using Green’s function:

e2 1 e2 1
W = e2 · G(x~1 , x~2 ) = −
4π0 x2 + y2 4π0 x2 + (y − 2d)2
p p
!
∂W  e2

x x
Fx =  = − + 2

− 2
∂x y=0 4π0 (x + y ) 2 3/2 (x + (y − 2d) )
2 3/2 
y=0
2
!
e 1 x
=− − 2+ 2
4π0 x (x + 4d2 )3/2

This is exactly the same result as derived above. The formula can be rewritten as:
!
e2 1 1
... = +1 −
4π0 x2 (1 + 4d2 /x2 )3/2

Performing a second order Taylor expansion (first order is zero) in 2d/x for x >> 2d,
on can get the following approximation:

e2 6d2
... ≈
4π0 x2 x2

Problem 2

By again using the concept of mirror charges and neglecting the mirror charge of the
electron (constant offset), the following potential energy can be derived (sum of two
Coulomb potentials):
 
e2 1 1
φ(x) = + p
 
− p 
4π0 
x + (d/2)
2 2 x + (3d/2)
2 2


Fig. 2 shows the potential energy compared to the unscreened potential energy: Both
the width and the depth decrease.
 0
no topgate
with topgate

−0.02
potential energy [arb. units]

−0.04

−0.06

−0.08

−0.1

−0.12
−400 −300 −200 −100 0 100 200 300 400
x [nm]

Figure 2: Screened and unscreened potential energy.