Coulomb blockade and hopping transport behaviors of donor-induced quantum dots in junctionless transistors

The ionized dopants, working as quantum dots in silicon nanowires, exhibit potential advantages for the development of atomic-scale transistors. We investigate single electron tunneling through a phosphorus dopant induced quantum dots array in heavily n-doped junctionless nanowire transistors. Several subpeaks splittings in current oscillations are clearly observed due to the coupling of the quantum dots at the temperature of 6 K. The transport behaviors change from resonance tunneling to hoping conduction with increased temperature. The charging energy of the phosphorus donors is approximately 12.8 meV. This work helps clear the basic mechanism of electron transport through donor-induced quantum dots and electron transport properties in the heavily doped nanowire through dopant engineering.     

Transport spectroscopy through dopant atom array in silicon junctionless nanowire transistors

We demonstrate electron transport spectroscopy through a dopant atom array in n-doped silicon junctionless nanowire transistors within a temperature range from 6 K to 250 K. Several current steps are observed at the initial stage of the transfer curves below 75 K, which result from the electron transport from Hubbard bands to one-dimensional conduction band. The current-off voltages in the transfer curves have a strikingly positive shift below 20 K and a negative shift above 20 K due to the electrostatic screening induced by the ionized dopant atoms. There exists the minimum electron mobility at a critical temperature of 20 K, resulting from the interplay between thermal activation and impurity scattering. Furthermore, electron transport behaviors change from hopping conductance to thermal activation conductance at the temperature of 30 K.     

硅纳米结构晶体管中与杂质量子点相关的量子输运

在小于10 nm的沟道空间中,杂质数目和杂质波动范围变得十分有限,这对器件性能有很大的影响.局域纳米空间中的电离杂质还能够展现出量子点特性,为电荷输运提供两个分立的杂质能级.利用杂质原子作为量子输运构件的硅纳米结构晶体管有望成为未来量子计算电路的基本组成器件.本文结合安德森定域化理论和Hubbard带模型对单个、分立和耦合杂质原子系统中的量子输运特性进行了综述,系统介绍了提升杂质原子晶体管工作温度的方法.     

Electric-field-dependent charge delocalization from dopant atoms in silicon junctionless nanowire transistor

We study electric-field-dependent charge delocalization from dopant atoms in a silicon junctionless nanowire transistor by low-temperature electron transport measurement. The Arrhenius plot of the temperature-dependent conductance demonstrates the transport behaviors of variable-range hopping(below 30 K) and nearest-neighbor hopping(above 30 K).The activation energy for the charge delocalization gradually decreases due to the confinement potential of the conduction channel decreasing from the threshold voltage to the flatband voltage. With the increase of the source–drain bias, the activation energy increases in a temperature range from 30 K to 100 K at a fixed gate voltage, but decreases above the temperature of 100 K.     

Band structure and impurity effects on optical properties of quantum well and quantum dot infrared photodetectors

We examined theoretically band structure and discrete dopant effects in the quantum well infrared photodetector (QWIP) and the quantum dot infrared photodetector (QDIP). We find that in QWIPs discrete dopant effects can induce long wavelength infrared absorption through impurity assisted intra-subband optical transitions. In QDIPs, we find that a strategically placed dopant atom in a quantum dot can easily destroy the symmetry and modify the selection rule. This mechanism could be partially responsible for normal incidence absorption observed in low-aspect-ratio quantum dots.     

Coulomb blockade and transport in a chain of one-dimensional quantum dots

A long one-dimensional wire with a finite density of strong random impurities is modeled as a chain of weakly coupled quantum dots. At low temperature T and applied voltage V its resistance is limited by breaks: randomly occurring clusters of quantum dots with a special length distribution pattern that inhibit the transport. Because of the interplay of interaction and disorder effects the resistance can exhibit T and V dependences that can be approximated by power laws. The corresponding two exponents differ greatly from each other and depend not only on the intrinsic electronic parameters but also on the impurity distribution statistics.     

Coulomb oscillations of the current through spin-nondegenerate <Emphasis Type="Italic">p</Emphasis> states of InAs quantum dots

The electron transport is studied in split-gate structures fabricated on the basis of a modulation-doped heterostructure that contains a single quantum well and self-assembled InAs quantum dots near the 2D electron gas regions. The current passing through the channel with a denumerable set of InAs quantum dots is found to exhibit Coulomb oscillations as a function of the gate voltage. The oscillations are associated with the excited p states of InAs quantum dots, which are characterized by opposite spins and caused by lifting of the spin degeneracy of the p state due to the Coulomb interaction. The Coulomb oscillations of the current are observed up to a temperature of ～20 K. The Coulomb energy is found to be ΔE_c = 12.5 meV, which agrees well with the theoretical estimates for the p states of quantum dots in the structures under study.     

Suppression of the virtual anderson transition in the impurity band of doped quantum well structures

We have previously observed activation-type conductivity with low activation energies of heavily doped p-GaAs/AlGaAs quantum well structures at low temperatures. It has been attributed to the delocalization of the electron states near the maximum of a narrow impurity band in the sense of the Anderson transition. The possibility of this delocalization at a relatively low impurity concentration is associated with the narrowness of the impurity band in the presence of weak disorder. In this case, charge carriers were activated from the tail of the band and their presence was due to the background (weak) compensation. In this work, we study the dependence of the above virtual Anderson transition on the external compensation and impurity concentration. It has been found that an increase in the compensation does not initially affect the Anderson transition; however, at a higher compensation, it leads to the suppression of the transition owing to the growing disorder. An increase in the impurity concentration also initially leads to the suppression of the Anderson transition due to the disorder associated with the partial overlap of the Hubbard bands. However, the conductivity becomes metallic at a fairly high concentration due to the Mott transition.     

Nonlinear thermoelectric response due to energy-dependent transport properties of a quantum dot

Quantum dots are useful model systems for studying quantum thermoelectric behavior because of their highly energy-dependent electron transport properties, which are tunable by electrostatic gating. As a result of this strong energy dependence, the thermoelectric response of quantum dots is expected to be nonlinear with respect to an applied thermal bias. However, until now this effect has been challenging to observe because, first, it is experimentally difficult to apply a sufficiently large thermal bias at the nanoscale and, second, it is difficult to distinguish thermal bias effects from purely temperature-dependent effects due to overall heating of a device. Here we take advantage of a novel thermal biasing technique and demonstrate a nonlinear thermoelectric response in a quantum dot which is defined in a heterostructured semiconductor nanowire. We also show that a theoretical model based on the Master equations fully explains the observed nonlinear thermoelectric response given the energy-dependent transport properties of the quantum dot.     

Effects of intersubband interaction on multisubband electron transport in single and double quantum wells

The multisubband electron transport properties are studied for doped single quantum well and gated double asymmetric quantum well structures. The effects due to intersubband interaction and screening of the ionized impurity scattering are also investigated. We show that intersubband coupling plays an essential role in describing the screening properties as well as the effect of ionized impurity scattering on the mobility in a doped single quantum well. For coupled double quantum well structures, negative transconductance is found theoretically which is due to resonant tunneling between the two quantum wells.     

Hydrogenic impurity in double quantum dots

The ground state binding energy and the average interparticle distances for a hydrogenic impurity in double quantum dots with Gaussian confinement potential are studied by the variational method. The probability density of the electron is calculated, too. The dependence of the binding energy on the impurity position is investigated for GaAs quantum dots. The result shows that the binding energy has a minimum as a function of the distance between the two quantum dots when the impurity is located at the center of one quantum dot or at the center of the edge of one quantum dot. When the impurity is located at the center of the two dots, the binding energy decreases monotonically.     

Antiresonance of electron tunneling through a quantum dot array

Electronic transport through a one-dimensional quantum dot array is theoretically studied. In such a system both electron reservoirs of continuum states couple with the individual component quantum dots of the array arbitrarily. When there are some dangling quantum dots in the array outside the dot(s) contacting the leads, the electron tunneling through the quantum dot array is wholly forbidden if the electron energy is just equal to the molecular energy levels of the dangling quantum dots, which is called as antiresonance of electron tunneling. Accordingly, when the chemical potential of the reservoir electrons is aligned with the electron levels of all quantum dots, the linear conductance at zero temperature vanishes if there are odd number dangling quantum dots; Otherwise, it is equal to 2e²/h due to resonant tunneling if the total number of quantum dots in the array is odd. This odd–even parity is independent of the interdot and the lead–dot coupling strength.     

Heterostructures with InGaAs/GaAs quantum dots doped with transition elements: II. Study of the circularly polarized luminescence

Optical and transport properties of the heterostructure with the InAs/GaAs quantum dots doped with manganese or chromium atoms in the course of growth using metal-organic vapor phase epitaxy (MOVPE) are analyzed. Circularly polarized luminescence was obtained due to doping of quantum dots with the Mn or Cr atoms. The sign of the degree of circular polarization was found to depend on the dopant. The effect is interpreted using specific features of the radiative recombination in quantum dots in the presence of resident electrons and holes.     

Charge storage and electron/light emission properties of silicon nanocrystals

Monodispersed silicon nanocrystals show novel electrical and optical characteristics of silicon quantum dots, such as single-electron tunneling, ballistic electron transport, visible photoluminescence and high-efficiency electron emission.Single-electron memory effects have been studied using a short-channel MOSFET incorporating Si quantum dots as a floating gate. Surface nitridation of Si nanocrystal memory nodes extends the charge-retention time significantly. Single-electron storage in individual Si dots has been evaluated by Kelvin probe force microscopy.Photoluminescence and electron emission are observed for surface-oxidized silicon nanocrystals. Efficiency of the no-phonon-assisted transition increases with decreasing core Si size. Electron emission efficiency as high as 5% has been achieved for the Si-nanocrystal-based cold electron emitter devices. The non-Maxwellian energy distribution of emitted electrons suggests that the mechanism of electron emission is due to ballistic transport through arrays of surface-oxidized Si nanocrystals. Combined with the ballistic electron emission, the quasi-direct light emission properties can be used for developing Si-based lasers.     

Transport theory for quantum wells with an electric field across the well: a new concept for a transistor

The transport properties of a two-dimensional electron gas in a quantum well with infinite barriers and with an electric field across the well as perturbation is calculated for zero temperature. Background impurity doping, remote impurity doping and interface roughness scattering are considered. The effects which are linear in the electric field are calculated. We suggest an experiment to measure the differences in the interface roughness scattering at the two interfaces of the quantum well by the electric field effect. We also discuss a possible device application of the field effect and describe a transistor working at the metal-insulator transition.     

Observation of hopping transitions for delocalized electrons by temperature-dependent conductance in silicon junctionless nanowire transistors

We demonstrate transitions of hopping behaviors for delocalized electrons through the discrete dopant-induced quantum dots in n-doped silicon junctionless nanowire transistors by the temperature-dependent conductance characteristics.There are two obvious transition platforms within the critical temperature regimes for the experimental conductance data,which are extracted from the unified transfer characteristics for different temperatures at the gate voltage positions of the initial transconductance gm peak in V_(g1) and valley in V_(g2). The crossover temperatures of the electron hopping behaviors are analytically determined by the temperature-dependent conductance at the gate voltages V_(g1) and V_(g2). This finding provides essential evidence for the hopping electron behaviors under the influence of thermal activation and long-range Coulomb interaction.     

Spin-polarized transient electron trapping in phosphorus-doped silicon

Experimental evidence of electron spin precession during travel through the phosphorus-doped Si channel of an all-electrical device simultaneously indicates two distinct processes: (i) short time scales (≈50 ps) due to purely conduction-band transport from injector to detector and (ii) long time scales (≈1 ns) originating from delays associated with capture or reemission in shallow impurity traps. The origin of this phenomenon, examined via temperature, voltage, and electron density dependence measurements, is established by means of a comparison to a numerical model and is shown to reveal the participation of metastable excited states in the phosphorus-impurity spectrum. This work therefore demonstrates the potential to make the study of macroscopic spin transport relevant to the quantum regime of individual spin interactions with impurities as envisioned for quantum information applications.     

Transport spectroscopy of an impurity spin in a carbon nanotube double quantum dot

We make use of spin selection rules to investigate the electron spin system of a carbon nanotube double quantum dot. Measurements of the electron transport as a function of the magnetic field and energy detuning between the quantum dots reveal an intricate pattern of the spin state evolution. We demonstrate that the complete set of measurements can be understood by taking into account the interplay between spin-orbit interaction and a single impurity spin coupled to the double dot. The detection and tunability of this coupling are important for quantum manipulation in carbon nanotubes.     

Electron dynamics in modulation p-doped InGaAs/GaAs quantum dots

We investigate the electron dynamics of p-type modulation doped and undoped InGaAs/GaAs quantum dots using up-conversion photoluminescence at low temperature and room temperature. The rise time of the p-doped sample is significantly shorter than that of the undoped at low temperature. With increasing to room temperature the undoped sample exhibits a decreased rise time whilst that of the doped sample does not change. A relaxation mechanism of electron-hole scattering is proposed in which the doped quantum dots exhibit an enhanced and temperature independent relaxation due to excess built-in holes in the valence band of the quantum dots. In contrast, the rise time of the undoped quantum dots decreases significantly at room temperature due to the large availability of holes in the ground state of the valence band. Furthermore, modulation p-doping results in a shorter lifetime due to the presence of excess defects.