Electron mobility and effective mass in composite InGaAs quantum wells with InAs and GaAs nanoinserts

The paper is concerned with the theoretical and experimental studies of the band structure and electrical properties of InAlAs/InGaAs/InAlAs/InP heterostructures containing a composite InGaAs quantum well with InAs and GaAs nanoinserts. From the Shubnikov-de Haas effect, the effective cyclotron mass $m^*_c$ is determined experimentally and calculated with consideration for the nonparabolicity of the electron energy spectrum. An approach to estimation of the effective mass is proposed and tested. The approach is based on weighted averaging of the $m^*_c$ of the composite quantum well’s constituent materials. A first proposed heterostructure containing two InAs inserts symmetrically arranged in the quantum well makes a 26% reduction in $m^*_c$ compared to $m^*_c$ in the lattice-matched In$_{0.53}$Ga$_{0.47}$As quantum well possible.