The effect of inter-dot separation on the finite difference solution of vertically aligned coupled quantum dots

The effect of inter-dot separation in a double pyramidal vertically aligned quantum dot system is investigated using a finite difference technique. It was found that as the separation distance increased beyond a certain limit, 40 Å in this case, the lowest energy electron wave function was localised in the larger dot. When the dots were in close proximity the probability of the carrier existing in the smaller dot increased. The method used here was a finite difference approach which is widely applicable to many scenarios and provided quantitative results for these intuitive concepts.