Field-induced generation-recombination noise in (100) n-channel Si-MOSFET's at T = 4.2 K: II. Experiments

The spectral noise intensity of the drain current of an n-channel (100) Si-MOSFET in strong inversion was measured as a function of drain current and gate voltage at T = 4.2 K. In addition to flicker noise and white noise it was possible to distinguish a Lorentzian, which was due to generation-recombination noise. Since, at T = 4.2 K, the 2D-electron gas in the MOSFET in strong inversion is degenerate this generation-recombination noise must be caused by traps in the conduction band. The measured noise relaxation time was found to depend on drain current.Our results can be interpreted in terms of a generation-recombination process in which the generation is partly field-induced. Agreement between theory and experiment is within the experimental error, both for the way in which the inverse noise relaxation time depends on drain current and the way in which the ratio of the low frequency plateau of the spectral noise intensity to the noise relaxation time depends on the product of drain current and drain voltage. Measurements of the ratio of the low-frequency plateau of the spectral noise intensity to the relaxation time versus gate voltage at T = 4.2 K we used to construct an energy spectrum of the density of traps in the conduction band. A maximum is observed at about 14meV above the bottom of the conduction band.     

Carrier transport mechanisms and photoelectrical properties of PbSnTe/PbTeSe heterojunctions

PbSnTe/PbTeSe heterojunctions grown by molecular epitaxy were investigated. Bulk generation-recombination and diffusion currents are shown to be dominant at T 30 K. The leakage current is presumably dominated by surface tunneling or by bulk defects in the depletion region at T < 30 K. Values of R′₀A-products 0.8−6.25Ω cm² at T = 77 K were obtained. When temperature decreases down to T = 4.2 K the R′₀A product increases up approximately two orders.     

Experimental studies on low frequency noise of Hg0.8Cd0.2 Te photoconductors

Combined with the measurements of material characteristic parameters, detector function parameters and their temperature relation, a series of new noise experimental results on Hg_0.8Cd_0.2 Te photoconductor are obtained. The Hooge parameter from these measurements ranges from 1.7 x 10⁻³ to 8.7 x 10⁻⁵ for temperatures 90–300 K. The 1/ƒ noise spectrum increases with increasing background emission, which cannot be explained by Hooge's empirical formula. The 1/ƒ noise is less than the lower limit calculated by existing theory.     

Hysteretic effects in the dc current-voltage characteristic of normal Nb/Pb tunnel junctions

High resistance normal Nb/Pb tunnel junctions have been studied. Both at 300 K and 77 K an hysteresis in the I–V characteristic has been measured: the presence of negative or positive bias voltages changes the tunneling probability. At every fixed bias current value, a voltage drift with time appears. The drift velocity increases as the voltage or the temperature increases. Moreover at 77 K anomalous low frequency oscillations arise in the junction when some positive or negative threshold voltages are exceeded.     

Electron-electron scattering and nonequilibrium noise in sharvin contacts

We consider wide ballistic microcontacts with electron-electron scattering in the leads and calculate electric noise and nonlinear conductance in them. Due to a restricted geometry the collisions of electrons result in a shot noise even though they conserve the total momentum of electrons. We obtain the noise and the conductivity for arbitrary relations between voltage V and temperature T. The positive inelastic correction to the Sharvin conductance is proportional to T at low voltages eV ≪ T, and to |V| at high voltages. At low voltages the noise is defined by the Nyquist relation and at high voltages the noise is related with the inelastic correction to the current by the Schottky formula S _in = 2eI _in.     

Magneto-transport properties of silicon inversion layers at low carrier densities

Conductivity σ and magneto-resistance of n- and p-channel MOSFET's with low oxide-charge density were investigated between 1.2 K and 4.2 K and carrier concentrations between 10¹¹/cm² and 10¹²/cm². Data were taken at different source drain electric field strengths. At small source drain fields and low carrier concentrations σ showed an activated behaviour with the activation energy decreasing with increasing carrier concentration. At source drain fields of the order 1 V/cm pronounced deviations from the activated behaviour were observed. In addition, the channel current-voltage characteristics of the devices studied were nonlinear. Shubnikov-De Haas oscillations were recorded at surface carrier concentrations as low as 10¹¹/cm². The data cannot be explained with a hopping model or by the existence of a mobility edge.     

Electrical resistivity measurements on the Cu2MnAl heusler alloy

Electrical resistivity measurements have been performed on the Cu₂MnAl Heusler alloy in the temperature range from 4.2 to 500°K. An AT⁵ functionality was found for 4.2°K ? = T ? 15°K, evidencing a Bloch-Grüneisen electron-phonon scattering mechanism. For 270°K ? T ? 500°K the resistivity may be described by the AT + BT² polynomial. The linear term is interpreted as due to the electron-phonon scattering process while the quadratic term may be ascribed to an electronic scattering due to a Spin disorder type relaxation process. The experimental results fail to provide evidences of s-d scattering of the conduction electrons.     

Flicker noise in degenerately doped Si single crystals near the metal-insulator transition

In this paper we report some of the important results of experimental investigations of the flicker noise near the metal-insulator (MI) transition in doped silicon single crystals. This is the first comprehensive work to study low-frequency noise in heavily doped Si over an extensive temperature range (2 K<T<500 K). The measurements of conductance fluctuations (flicker noise) were carried out in the frequency range 10⁻²<f<4 × 10¹ Hz in single crystalline Si across the MI transition by doping with phosphorous and boron. The magnitude of noise in heavily doped Si is much larger than that seen in lightly doped Si over the whole temperature range. The extensive temperature range covered allowed us to detect two distinct noise mechanisms. At low temperatures (T<100 K) universal conductance fluctuations (UCF) dominate and the spectral dependence of the noise is determined by dephasing the electron from defects with two-levels (TLS). At higher temperatures (T>200 K) the noise arises from activated defect dynamics. As the MI transition is approached, the 1/f spectral power, typical of the metallic regime, gets modified by the presence of discrete Lorentzians which arise from generation-recombination process which is the characteristic of a semiconductor.     

Hall effect and magnetoresistance of (SN)x films

Hall effect and electrical conductivity have been investigated between 77 K and 300 K and the magnetoresistance at 4.2 K for a number of (SN)_x films deposited at substrate temperatures between — 10 and 50°C. The small magnitude of the Hall mobility (? 1 cm² Vsec^?1 at 300 K) and its activated temperature dependence are interpreted in terms of a heterogenous model for (SN)_x films with thin depletion layers separating highly conductive islands. The hole concentration in these islands (p ≈ 10²¹ cm^?3, the microscopic mobility (μ ≈ 500 cm² Vsec^?1 at 4.2 K) and the temperatures dependence of μ are found to be close to values for (SN)_x crystals.     

Hysteresis phenomena in charging of Si Mosfet in quantizing magnetic field

We report the observation of nonequilibrium processes of charging in 2D electron layer in Si MOSFET. There were investigated the hysteresis variations of a 2D-layer charge Q_S with a gate voltage V_g or with a magnetic field H, and the hysteresis of a gate potential U_g vs magnetic field at Q_S = Const. At sufficiently low temperature T < 1K the relaxation time of a nonequilibrium state is much higher than 10³ sec. The observed phenomena may be explained qualitatively in frame of a surface potential randomness conception.     

Variable temperature EPR study of Fe2+ spin transition in Cu2+ doped [Fe(trz)(Htrz)2](BF4)

The temperature dependence of the EPR spectrum of Cu²⁺ in the range 293–393 K exhibits a low-spin (S=0) to high-spin (S=2) transition of the Fe²⁺ ions, with hysteresis (T _c↑=363 K,T _c↓=343 K). At 103 K, the principal values of theg and hyperfine tensors of Cu²⁺ ions are revealed by hyperfine structure.     

Experimental characterization of temperature‐dependent electron transport in single‐wall multi‐tube carbon nanotube transistors

Current–voltage, radio‐frequency (RF) and noise characteristics of single‐wall multi‐tube carbon nanotube (CNT) transistors were measured at cryogenic temperatures. Compared to an ambient temperature (T_a) of 300 K, only a slight drain current increase at T_a = 77 K was observed. In addition, a weak dependence of the maximum value of the current gain cut‐off frequency (f_T) on T_a was obtained, indicating that f_T is rather limited by the device intrinsic quantum and extrinsic capacitances than by an improved mobility due to reduced optical phonon scattering at low T_a. A noise analysis of the devices at T_a = 10 K reveals that the noise factor (NF) improvement at very low temperatures is related to the reduced Nyquist noise of all resistive transistor noise contributors. Since the main noise source in CNTFETs is the shot noise, NF remains comparatively high even at T_a = 10 K.

     

Electrical resistivity of UMn2

The electrical resistivity of polycristalline UMn₂ has been measured between 4.2 and 300 K. There is a very small anomaly around the distortion (T_D = 2212 K). At low temperature the T² dependence is tentatively attributed to 3d spin fluctuations.     

Sound velocity in single crystals of synthetic opals

The [111] longitudinal sound velocity (v _L) in a single-crystal synthetic opal has been measured at a frequency of 10 MHz in the temperature range 4.2–300 K. At 300 K, v _L=2.1×10⁵ cm/s. The quantity dv _L/v _{300 K}(T) (where v _T,K?v_{300 K}) in the ranges 4.2–200 and 200–300 K behaves in the way typical of amorphous and crystalline solids, respectively.     

Magnetism of ErAgSn studied by 119Sn Mössbauer spectroscopy

Antiferromagnetic ErAgSn compound was investigated in detail by ¹¹⁹Sn Mössbauer spectroscopy in a temperature range between 2.2 and 300 K. The ¹¹⁹Sn spectra recorded below 4.2 K can be well fitted with a single main magnetic component in agreement with recent neutron diffraction studies [1]. A broad distribution of magnetic hyperfine fields observed above 4.2 K and enhanced spin correlations among Er³⁺ ions at T > T _N = 5.6 K are the remarkable features of the investigated system.     

Carrier concentration dependence and temperature dependence of mobility in silicon (100) N-channel inversion layers at low temperatures

The carrier concentration (N_s) dependence of electron mobility in Si (100) inversion layers has been measured at temperatures T = 1.5?70K for high- and low-mobility MOSFETs. An extrinsic term is observed in the T-dependent part of the scattering probability, τ^?1_T. At T = 4.4 K, τ^?1_T depends on N_s as N^?1.9_s in low mobility samples. In high-mobility samples, τ^?1_T increases with increasing N_s in high N_s region while τ^?1_T ∝ N^?1.6_s in low N_s region. The N_s-dependence of τ^?1_T becomes weaker with increasing T in both of low- and high-mobility samples. At N_s = 3 × 10¹² cm^?2, τ^?1_T depends on T as T^1.8 in low-mobility samples and τ^?1_T ∝ T^2.0 in high- mobility samples at T 5 K.     

Studies of electron screening effects on the electron mobility in silicon surface inversion layers

Theoretical calculations of the effects of electron screening of the randomly distributed oxide charges on the electron mobility in surface inversion layers at 4.2 K show that screening substantially enhances the mobility even in weakly inverted surface layer. Surface conductances are measured at 4.2 and 77 K on n-channel MOS transistors with 4 × 10¹¹ ions/cm². Threshold voltages are obtained by matching the inversion layer conductance versus gate voltage data to the theory. The observed mobility magnitude at 4.2 K is about 2000 cm²/V-s which is in excellent agreement with the theory including screening but without adjustable parameters. A conductance tail of several volts wide below the theoretical threshold voltage and a large positive threshold voltage shift are observed at low temperatures which are attributed to an areal inhomogeneous distribution of fast surface states near the silicon conduction band edge.     

Low-voltage-drive and high output current ZnO thin-film transistors with sputtering SiO2 as gate insulator

Low-voltage-drive ZnO thin-film transistors (TFTs) with room-temperature radio frequency magnetron sputtering SiO₂ as the gate insulator were fabricated successfully on the glass substrate. The ZnO-TFT operates in the enhancement mode with a threshold voltage of 4.2 V, a field effect mobility of 11.2 cm²/V s, an on/off ratio of 3.1 × 10⁶ and a subthreshold swing of 0.61 V/dec. The drain current can reach to 1 mA while the gate voltage is only of 12 V and drain voltage of 8 V. The C–V characteristics of a MOS capacitor with the structure of ITO/SiO₂/ZnO/Al was investigated. The carrier concentration N_D in the ZnO active layer was determined, the calculated N_D is 1.81 × 10¹⁶ cm⁻³, which is the typical value of undoped ZnO film used as the channel layer for ZnO-TFT devices. The experiment results show that SiO₂ film is a promising insulator for the low voltage and high drive capability oxide TFTs.     

Apparent anomalous behavior of the power spectrum of 1/f noise and its explanation

The explanation is given for the apparent anomalous behavior of the power spectrum of 1/f noise as if it corresponded to the total infinite power of noise sources. Physical mechanisms eliminating the apparent anomalies are described. With these mechanisms, the finite and integrable 1/f-noise power spectra fitting the known physical concepts of noise processes are obtained in the low-and high-frequency limits.