Scattering approach to scanning gate microscopy

We present a perturbative approach to the conductance change caused by a weakly invasive scattering potential in a two-dimensional electron gas. The resulting expressions are used to investigate the relationship between the conductance change measured in scanning gate microscopy as a function of the position of a scattering tip and local electronic quantities like the current density. We use a semiclassical approach to treat the case of a strong hard-wall scatterer in a half-plane facing a reflectionless channel. The resulting conductance change is consistent with the numerically calculated quantum conductance.     

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.     

Quantum-chaotic scattering effects in semiconductor microstructures

We show that classical chaotic scattering has experimentally measurable consequences for the quantum conductance of semiconductor microstructures. These include the existence of conductance fluctuations-a sensitivity of the conductance to either Fermi energy or magnetic field-and weak-localization-a change in the average conductance upon applying a magnetic field. We develop a semiclassical theory and present numerical results for these two effects in which we model the microstructures by billiards attached to leads. We find that the difference between chaotic and regular classical scattering produces a qualitative difference in the fluctuation spectrum and weak-localization lineshape of chaotic and nonchaotic structures. While the semiclassical theory within the diagonal approximation accounts well for the weak-localization lineshape and for the spectrum of the fluctuations, we uncover a surprising failure of the semiclassical diagonal-approximation theory in describing the magnitude of these quantum transport effects.     

Conductance of tubular nanowires with disorder

We calculate the conductance of tubular-shaped nanowires having many potential scatterers at random positions. Our approach is based on the scattering matrix formalism and our results analyzed within the scaling theory of disordered conductors. When increasing the energy the conductance for a big enough number of impurities in the tube manifests a systematic evolution from the localized to the metallic regimes. Nevertheless, a conspicuous drop in conductance is predicted whenever a new transverse channel is open. Comparison with the semiclassical calculation leading to purely ohmic behavior is made.     

Conductance fluctuations and quantum chaotic scattering in semiconductor microstructures

We review recent experiments on aperiodic conductance fluctuations in ballistic GaAs/AlGaAs microstructures in the shape of a stadium billiard and a circle with point-contact leads, measured at millikelvin temperatures. Much of the observed behavior can be analyzed within a semiclassical approach to quantum chaotic scattering. After a brief review of the Landauer-Buttiker formulation of coherent transport, a variety of novel experimental phenomena and comparisons to semiclassical theory are presented. In particular, we discuss quantum-enhanced backscattering, the power spectrum of conductance fluctuations, crossover to the high-magnetic-field and tunneling regimes, and an application allowing the rate of phase-randomizing scattering to be measured in chaotic ballistic microstructures.     

Tunneling conductance of a two-dimensional electron gas with Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling

We theoretically studied the spin-dependent charge transport in a two-dimensional electron gas with Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling (DSOC) and metal junctions. It is shown that the DSOC energy can be directly measured from the tunneling conductance spectrum. We found that spin polarization of the conductance in the propagation direction can be obtained by injecting from the DSOC system. We also considered the effect of the interfacial scattering barrier (both spin-flip and non-spin-flip scattering) on the overall conductance and the spin polarization of the conductance. It is found that the increase of spin-flip scattering can enhance the conductance under certain conditions. Moreover, both types of scattering can increase the spin polarization below the branches crossing of the energy band.     

Spin-flip effects in a parallel-coupled double quantum dot molecule

We investigate theoretically the electronic transport through a parallel-coupled double quantum dot (DQD) molecule attached to metallic electrodes, in which the spin-flip scattering on each quantum dot is considered. Special attention is paid to the effects of the intradot spin-flip processes on the linear conductance by using the equation of motion approach for Green’s functions. When a weak spin-flip scattering on each quantum dot is present, the single Fano peak splits into two Fano peaks, and the Breit–Wigner resonance may be suppressed slightly. When the spin-flip scattering strength on each quantum dot becomes strong, the linear conductance spectrum consists of two Breit–Wigner peaks and two Fano peaks due to the quantum interference effects. The positions and shapes of these resonant peaks can be controlled by using the magnetic flux through the quantum device.     

Contact and phonon scattering effects on quantum transport properties of carbon-nanotube field-effect transistors

We investigated the phonon scattering effects on the transport properties of carbon nanotube devices with micron-order lengths at room temperature, using the time-dependent wave-packet approach based on the Kubo formula within a tight-binding approximation. We studied the scattering effects of both the longitudinal acoustic and the optical phonons on the transport properties. The conductance of semiconducting nanotubes is decreased by the acoustic phonon, instead of the optical phonon. Furthermore, we clarified how the electron mobilities of the devices are affected by the acoustic phonon.     

苯基分子器件 量子相干输运第一性原理研究

摘要：分子器件在纳米尺度下,电子的相干性将对体系的电导产生重大影响。本文基于第一性原理计算研究了苯分子连接于一维金属电极下的电荷输运性质。发现一维金电极连接下,不同的连接方式（para与meta）体系下的电导将会有显著差别,而一维铂电极连接下,体系的电导差别不大。我们通过计算电极的能带,发现金电极与铂电极在费米面处的散射态数目有差别。 当量子相干效应导致散射态局域化发生改变时,由于铂电极的通道数较多,电子依然可以通过扩展的通道输运,因此不同连接方式下的电导变化不明显。     

Phonon scattering and thermal conductance properties in two coupled graphene nanoribbons modulated with bridge atoms

The phonon scattering and thermal conductance properties have been studied in two coupled graphene nanoribbons connected by different bridge atoms by using density functional theory in combination with non-equilibrium Green's function approach. The results show that a wide range of thermal conductance tuning can be realized by changing the chemical bond strength and atom mass of the bridge atoms. It is found that the chemical bond strength (bridge atom mass) plays the main role in phonon scattering at low (high) temperature. A simple equation is presented to describe the relationship among the thermal conductance, bridge atom, and temperature.     

Mesoscopic conductance fluctuations in graphene

We study fluctuations of the conductance of micron-sized graphene devices as a function of the Fermi energy and magnetic field. The fluctuations are studied in combination with analysis of weak localization which is determined by the same scattering mechanisms. It is shown that the variance of conductance fluctuations depends not only on inelastic scattering that controls dephasing but also on elastic scattering. In particular, contrary to its effect on weak localization, strong intervalley scattering suppresses conductance fluctuations in graphene. The correlation energy, however, is independent of the details of elastic scattering and can be used to determine the electron temperature of graphene structures.     

Band structure and quantum conductance of nanostructures from maximally localized Wannier functions: the case of functionalized carbon nanotubes

We have combined large-scale, tau-point electronic-structure calculations with the maximally localized Wannier functions approach to calculate efficiently the band structure and the quantum conductance of complex systems containing thousands of atoms while maintaining full first-principles accuracy. We have applied this approach to study covalent functionalizations in metallic single-walled carbon nanotubes. We find that the band structure around the Fermi energy is much less dependent on the chemical nature of the ligands than on the sp(3) functionalization pattern disrupting the conjugation network. Common aryl functionalizations are more stable when paired with saturating hydrogens; even when paired, they still act as strong scattering centers that degrade the ballistic conductance of the nanotubes already at low degrees of coverage.     

超导邻近效应在正常金属层中引起的反常小能隙现象

将散射矩阵方法推广到超导双结系统，对正常金属/正常金属/超导结的隧道电导进行了研究.中间正常金属层中的电子和其Andreev反射空穴之间的相位相干性导致了隧道电导出现反常小能隙现象.综合考虑相干和顺序遂穿，计算结果理想的解释了最近Gupta等人在实验中观测到的反常小能隙现象.     

A dynamic scattering approach for a gated interacting wire

A scattering approach for correlated one-dimensional systems is developed. The perfect contact to charge reservoirs is encoded in time-dependent boundary conditions. The conductance matrix for an arbitrary gated wire, respecting charge conservation, is expressed through a dynamic scattering matrix. Two applications are developed. First, it is shown that the dc conductance is equal to e ²/h for any model with conserved total left- and right-moving charges. Second, the ac conductance matrix is explicitly computated for the Tomonaga-Luttinger model (TLL). Received 31 August 1998     

多空穴错位分布对石墨纳米带中热输运的影响

利用非平衡格林函数方法研究了石墨纳米带中三空穴错位分布对热输运性质的影响.研究结果发现:三空穴竖直并排结构对低频声子的散射较小,导致低温区域三空穴竖直并排时热导最大,而在高频区域,三空穴竖直并排结构对高频声子的散射较大,导致较高温度区域三空穴竖直并排时热导最小;三空穴的相对错位分布仅能较大幅度地调节面内声学模高频声子的透射概率,而三空穴的相对错位分布能较大幅度地调节垂直振动膜高频声子和低频声子的透射概率,导致三空穴的相对错位分布不仅能大幅调节面内声学模和垂直振动模的高温热导,也能大幅调节垂直振动模的低温热导.研究结果阐明了空穴位置不同的石墨纳米带的热导特性,为设计基于石墨纳米带的热输运量子器件提供了有效的理论依据.     

Nonequilibrium Green's function approach to phonon transport in defective carbon nanotubes

We have developed a new theoretical formalism for phonon transport in nanostructures using the nonequilibrium phonon Green's function technique and have applied it to thermal conduction in defective carbon nanotubes. The universal quantization of low-temperature thermal conductance in carbon nanotubes can be observed even in the presence of local structural defects such as vacancies and Stone-Wales defects, since the long wavelength acoustic phonons are not scattered by local defects. At room temperature, however, thermal conductance is critically affected by defect scattering since incident phonons are scattered by localized phonons around the defects. We find a remarkable change from quantum to classical features for the thermal transport through defective carbon nanotubes with increasing temperature.     

Ab initio calculations of transport properties of atomic bridges by the recursion-transfer-matrix method

We present an efficient self-consistent method for approaching quantum transport through atomic-scale structures. Using the recursion-transfer-matrix (RTM) method with a separable form of nonlocal pseudopotentials, scattering waves propagating between metallic electrodes through nano-bridged structures are efficiently calculated on the basis of the density-functional formalism. We performed calculations with this method of the conductance of Al atomic wires with various kinds of single atoms mixed at the contact to one electrode. We found that the transport properties are considerably affected by the bonding nature of the atom at the contact. The conductance is largely determined by the atomic species at the contact and does not change much as the length of the atomic wire increases.     

What is measured in the scanning gate microscopy of a quantum point contact?

The conductance change due to a local perturbation in a phase-coherent nanostructure is calculated. The general expressions to first and second order in the perturbation are applied to the scanning gate microscopy of a two-dimensional electron gas containing a quantum point contact. The first-order correction depends on two scattering states with electrons incoming from opposite leads and is suppressed on a conductance plateau; it is significant in the step regions. On the plateaus, the dominant second-order term likewise depends on scattering states incoming from both sides. It is always negative, exhibits fringes, and has a spatial decay consistent with experiments.     

铁磁绝缘层对正常金属/铁磁绝缘层/正常金属/p波超导结隧道谱的影响

在正常金属/铁磁绝缘层/正常金属/自旋三重态p波超导隧道结中,考虑到铁磁绝缘层的磁散射和粗糙界面散射,运用Bogoliubov-de Gennes(BdG)方程和Blonder-Tinkham-Klapwijk(BTK)理论模型,研究了铁磁绝缘层对隧道结微分电导的影响.研究表明:(1)对于px波,粗糙界面散射和磁散射都能使零偏压电导峰变低,能隙处凹陷升高;随着磁散射的增强,谱线的尖锐峰消失,宽峰逐渐变为凹陷;(2)对于py波,粗糙界面散射和磁散射都能使零能凹陷上移,能隙峰变低,随着粗糙界面散射的增强,两能隙峰间距减小;随着中间正常金属层厚度的增加,能隙内电导随外加偏压呈现振荡行为,能隙外电导仅与普通势垒有关;(3)对于px+ipy波,随着粗糙界面散射的增强,零偏压电导峰被压低,双凹陷处的值逐渐增大为小的能隙峰,而磁散射并不改变谱线中各凹陷处的电导值.     

Conductance distribution in two-dimensional localized systems with and without magnetic fields

We have obtained the universal conductance distribution of two-dimensional disordered systems in the strongly localized limit. This distribution is directly related to the Tracy-Widom distribution, which has recently appeared in many different problems. We first map a forward scattering paths model into a problem of directed random polymers previously solved. We show numerically that the same distribution also applies to other forward scattering paths models and to the Anderson model. We show that most of the electric current follows a preferential percolation-type path. The particular form of the distribution depends on the type of leads used to measure the conductance. The application of a moderate magnetic field changes the average conductance and the size of fluctuations, but not the distribution when properly scaled. Although the presence of magnetic field changes the universality class, we show that the conductance distribution in the strongly localized limit is the same for both classes.