Optical experiments on electric field tunable AlAs/GaAs coupled quantum wells clearly demonstrate that the optical nature of these structures can be directly controlled by an applied electric field. In this work we are concerned with calculation and analysis of the first electron and holOe states in these structures. We take into account the effects of the heterostrucuture geometry and of the external uniform electric field applied perpendicularly to the layers, which may lead to an anticrossing of low-lying electron levels in the system. Calculations are performed within the tight-binding supercell formalism with interactions between atomic orbitals up to second nearest-neighbors. Our results show that for GaAs layers less than <img src="http:/img/fbpe/bjp/v32n2a/a18img01.gif" align="absMiddle"> 30 Å wide, application of electric fields takes the structures from typeII to type I heteroestructure behavior. Our estimated value of the electric field intensity needed to cause this transition is in good agreement with the experimental results for comparable heteroestructures geometries .
