Electron-phonon scattering rates in quantum wires

Electron-phonon scattering rates for quantum wires composed of one compound semiconductor material within another are calculated rigorously for arbitrary wire shapes within the dielectric continuum approach for the optical phonons and the effective-mass approximation for the electrons. Detailed results are given for the intrasubband and intersubband scattering rates as functions of the initial electron energy and of wire size for wires of rectangular cross section. We find that interface phonons give important contributions to the scattering rates, especially for small (≲100 Å) wire widths or high electron energies. We also give a quantitative appraisal of the rates obtained using simple separable approximations for the phonons.