Efficient carrier blocking by a single ‘‘attractive’’ potential is demonstrated using a strained Si0.85Ge0.15/Si quantum well (QW). The carrier blocking becomes pronounced at increased temperatures as most of the carriers at the QW bound state are thermalized with the barrier band edge. The carrier blocking efficiency at 100 K is almost of the order of unity as compared to insufficient carrier blocking due to a large ‘‘repulsive’’ potential associated with SiO2. The carrier blocking arises from efficient hole reemission from the QW that reflects a highly efficient carrier capture to the strained Si1−xGex/Si QWs from Si barriers. It is further shown that a single QW is the optimized geometry for efficient carrier blocking and that multiple well potentials lead only to a reduced blocking efficiency. ©1996 American Institute of Physics.