Anomalous electric-field effect and glassy behaviour in granular aluminium thin films: electron glass?

We present a study of non-equilibrium phenomena observed in the electrical conductance of insulating granular aluminium thin films. An anomalous field effect and its slow relaxation are studied in some detail. The phenomenology is very similar to the one already observed in indium oxide. The origin of the phenomena is discussed. In granular systems, the present experiments can naturally be interpreted along two different lines. One relies on a slow polarisation in the dielectric surrounding the metallic islands. The other one relies on a purely electronic mechanism: the formation of an electron Coulomb glass in the granular metal. More selective experiments and/or quantitative predictions about the Coulomb glass properties are still needed to definitely distinguish between the two scenarios.     

Coulomb blockade in molecular quantum dots

The rate-equation approach is used to describe sequential tunneling through a molecular junction in the Coulomb blockade regime. Such device is composed of molecular quantum dot (with discrete energy levels) coupled with two metallic electrodes via potential barriers. Based on this model, we calculate nonlinear transport characteristics (conductance-voltage and current-voltage dependences) and compare them with the results obtained within a self-consistent field approach. It is shown that the shape of transport characteristics is determined by the combined effect of the electronic structure of molecular quantum dots and by the Coulomb blockade. In particular, the following phenomena are discussed in detail: the suppression of the current at higher voltages, the charging-induced rectification effect, the charging-generated changes of conductance gap and the temperature-induced as well as broadening-generated smoothing of current steps.     

Current and shot noise in two capacitively coupled single electron transistors with an atomic sized spacer

The currents and their fluctuations in two capacitively coupled single electron transistors are determined in the limit of sequential tunnelling. Our considerations are restricted to the case when the islands (dots) of the transistors are atomic-sized, which means each of them has only one single electronic level available for the tunnelling processes. The Coulomb interactions of accumulated charges on the both single electron transistors lead to the effect of the negative differential resistance. An enhancement of the current shot-noise was also found. Spectral decomposition analysis indicated the two main contributions to the shot-noise: low- and high-frequency fluctuations. It was found that the low frequency fluctuations (polarization noise) are responsible for a strong enhancement of the current noise. Received 9 October 2001 / Received in final form 8 March 2002 Published online 9 July 2002     

单电子晶体管电导振荡及其解释

文中概述了单电子晶体管电导振荡的特点并进行了理论解释，进而讨论了介观电容及电容谱的概念。     

Prospects of Observing Ionic Coulomb Blockade in Artificial Ion Confinements

Nanofluidics encompasses a wide range of advanced approaches to study charge and mass transport at the nanoscale. Modern technologies allow us to develop and improve artificial nanofluidic platforms that confine ions in a way similar to single-ion channels in living cells. Therefore, nanofluidic platforms show great potential to act as a test field for theoretical models. This review aims to highlight ionic Coulomb blockade (ICB)—an effect that is proposed to be the key player of ion channel selectivity, which is based upon electrostatic exclusion limiting ion transport. Thus, in this perspective, we focus on the most promising approaches that have been reported on the subject. We consider ion confinements of various dimensionalities and highlight the most recent advancements in the field. Furthermore, we concentrate on the most critical obstacles associated with these studies and suggest possible solutions to advance the field further.     

Equipping Natural Killer Cells with Specific Targeting and Checkpoint Blocking Aptamers for Enhanced Adoptive Immunotherapy in Solid Tumors

Herein, we propose an aptamer‐equipping strategy to generate specific, universal and permeable (SUPER) NK cells for enhanced immunotherapy in solid tumors. NK cells were chemically equipped with TLS11a aptamer targeting HepG2 cells and PDL1‐specific aptamer without genetic alteration. The dual aptamer‐equipped NK cells exhibited high specificity to tumor cells, resulting in higher cytokine secretion and apoptosis/necrosis compared to parental or single aptamer‐equipped NK cells. Interestingly, dual aptamer‐equipped NK cells induced remarkable upregulation of PDL1 expression in HepG2 cells, enhancing checkpoint blockade. Furthermore, in vivo intravital imaging demonstrated high infiltration of aptamer‐equipped NK cells into deep tumor region, leading to enhanced therapeutic efficacy in solid tumors. This work offers a straightforward chemical strategy to equip NK cells with aptamers, holding considerable potential for enhanced adoptive immunotherapy in solid tumors.     

Eliminating interactions between non-neighboring qubits in the preparation of cluster states in quantum molecules

We propose a scheme to eliminate the effect of non-nearest-neighbor qubits in preparing cluster state with double-dot molecules. As the interaction Hamiltonians between qubits are Ising-model and mutually commute, we can get positive and negative effective interactions between qubits to cancel the effect of non-nearest-neighbor qubits by properly changing the electron charge states of each quantum dot molecule. The total time for the present multi-step cluster state preparation scheme is only doubled for one-dimensional qubit chain and tripled for two-dimensional qubit array comparing with the time of previous protocol leaving out the non-nearest-neighbor interactions.     

Current--voltage characteristics of an individual helical CdS nanowire rope

This paper studies the electronic transport in an individual helically twisted CdS nanowire rope, on which platinum microleads are attached by focused-ion beam deposition. The current-voltage （I - V） characteristics are nonlinear from 300 down to 60 K. Some step-like structures in the I - V curves and oscillation peaks in the differential conductance （dI/dV - V） curves have been observed even at room temperature. It proposes that the observed behaviour can be attributed to Coulomb-blockade transport in the one-dimensional CdS nanowires with diameters of 6-10 nm.     

Influence of the thickness of the tunnel layer on the charging characteristics of Si nanocrystals embedded in an ultra-thin SiO2 layer

In this paper, we have studied the effect of the thickness of the initial SiO₂ layer (5–7 nm) on the charge and discharge properties of a 2D array of Si nanoparticles embedded in these SiO₂ layers fabricated by ultra-low-energy ion implantation (ULE-II) and annealing. The structural characteristics of these nanocrystal-based memories (position of the nanocrystals with respect to the electrodes, size and surface density of the particles in the plane) were studied by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and energy filtered TEM (EF-TEM). Electrical characterizations were performed at room temperature using a nano-MOS capacitor to be able to address only a few nanoparticles (nps). EFTEM gives the measurements of oxide thickness, injection, control and nps distances, size and density. I–V and I–t measurements exhibit current peaks and random telegraph signal fluctuations that can be interpreted as due to quantized charging of the nps and to some electrostatic interactions between the trapped charges and the tunnelling current. We have shown that these characteristics strongly vary with the initial oxide thickness, exhibiting several charging/discharging events for the 7-nm-thick layer while charging events prevail in the case of 5-nm-thick layer. These results indicate that the probability of discharging phenomena is reduced when the tunnel layer thickness decreases.     

金属结单电子晶体管的模型建立及实验验证

在正统理论的基础上,使用主方程法建立了金属结单电子晶体管的器件模型和算法流程.将电容、电阻和温度等参数代入器件模型得到的I-Ⅴ特性曲线与实验结果吻合较好,从而验证了模型、算法以及程序流程的正确性.此外,通过详细讨论模拟与实验的三组曲线差别,得到模型使用主方程的稳态解是导致模拟与实验之间结果存在差别的主要原因,即求解含有时间的主方程将增加模拟精度;而且,指出镜像电荷引起的电势使电流随电压呈现指数增加的主要影响因素,明显偏离理论模拟的线性增加趋势.