We study theoretically the relative importance of short-range disorder in determining the low-temperature two-dimensional (2D) mobility in GaAs-based structures with respect to Coulomb disorder, which is known to be the dominant disorder in semiconductor systems. We give results for unscreened and screened short-range disorder effects on 2D mobility in quantum wells and heterostructures, comparing with the results for Coulomb disorder and finding that the asymptotic high-density mobility is always limited by short-range disorder which, in general, becomes effectively stronger with increasing “carrier density”, in contrast to Coulomb disorder. We also predict an intriguing reentrant metal-insulator transition at very high carrier densities in Si metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors driven by the short-range disorder associated with surface-roughness scattering.

• Received 2 January 2014
• Revised 18 March 2014

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.89.121413