A Silicon Cluster Based Single Electron Transistor with Potential Room-Temperature Switching

We demonstrate the fabrication of a single electron transistor device based on a single ultra-small silicon quantum dot connected to a gold break junction with a nanometer scale separation. The gold break junction is created through a controllable electromigration process and the individual silicon quantum dot in the junction is determined to be a Si_(170) cluster. Differential conductance as a function of the bias and gate voltage clearly shows the Coulomb diamond which confirms that the transport is dominated by a single silicon quantum dot. It is found that the charging energy can be as large as 300 meV, which is a result of the large capacitance of a small silicon quantum dot(～1.8 nm). This large Coulomb interaction can potentially enable a single electron transistor to work at room temperature. The level spacing of the excited state can be as large as 10 meV, which enables us to manipulate individual spin via an external magnetic field. The resulting Zeeman splitting is measured and the g factor of 2.3 is obtained, suggesting relatively weak electron-electron interaction in the silicon quantum dot which is beneficial for spin coherence time.     

石墨烯中选择性增强Kane-Mele型自旋-轨道相互作用

增强石墨烯中的自旋-轨道相互作用可能实现无耗散的量子自旋霍尔器件,这需要在石墨烯样品中引入独特的Kane-Mele型自旋-轨道相互作用,并保持较高的迁移率.然而,对石墨烯的外在修饰往往会引入“外禀型”Rashba自旋-轨道相互作用,会破坏可能存在的拓扑态,并带来一定程度的杂质散射,降低样品迁移率.在石墨烯表面修饰EDTA-Dy分子后,载流子迁移率得到了提高,并且可以看到显著的量子霍尔电导平台.其弱局域化效应相比被修饰之前得到了抑制,这意味石墨烯中可能引入了内禀的Kane-Mele型自旋-轨道相互作用,增强了Elliot-Yafet型电子自旋弛豫机制.进一步通过矢量磁体磁阻测量,发现该分子覆盖在石墨烯上后造成了石墨烯微弱的涟漪,这种涟漪引起的弯曲声子效应模拟了Kane-Mele型自旋-轨道相互作用.