Single-electron tunneling in silicon-on-insulator nano-wire transistors

The gate bias dependent evolution of the Coulomb oscillations in a silicon-on-insulator nano-wire transistor is reported. Transport data obtained for a wide range of front- and back-gate bias strongly suggest that multiple quantum dots (QDs) with different potential depths are formed in the nano-wire channel. Our data can be clearly interpreted as arising from the turning on or off of one of these QDs as the back-gate bias is varied. Quantitative calculation based on the model of single-electron tunneling through two parallel QDs is in reasonable agreement with the measured data in the back-gate bias range where the third dot is not activated.