Curved two-dimensional electron gases

A method is introduced which makes it possible to fabricate non-planar two-dimensional electron gases. Making use of the “epitaxial lift-off” process, patterned, gated and contacted heterostructures are transferred from their crystalline substrate onto small glass tubes with diameters of a few millimeters. The transport properties of two-dimensional electron gases inside these curved semiconductor films are characterized by low-temperature magnetoresistance measurements. In the longitudinal resistance we find weak Shubnikov–de Haas oscillations, which are periodic in B⁻¹. The transverse resistance exhibits well-developed quantum Hall plateaus at low magnetic fields. At high fields, we observe a pronounced breakdown of the Hall effect. The experimental results are compared with simple theoretical models.