Conductance distribution in nanometer-sized semiconductor devices due to dopant statistics

Abstract

We show that individual dopant atoms dominate the transport characteristics of nanometer-sized devices, by investigating metal-semiconductor diodes down to 15 nm diameter. Room-temperature measurements reveal a strongly increasing scatter in the device-to-device conductance towards smaller device sizes. The lowtemperature measurements exhibit pronounced features, caused by resonant tunneling through electronic states of individual dopant atoms. We demonstrate by a statistical analysis that this behavior can be explained by the presence of randomly distributed individual dopant atoms in the space-charge region.

Spin‐dependent transport in elemental and compound semiconductors and nanostructures

“…First time-resolved EDMR measurements have already been reported [96]. A combination of such experiments where Rabi oscillations can be detected through transport measurements with nanostructures containing a single paramagnetic center such as a dopant [97] or a quantum dot [98] will be a crucial step towards the realization of spinbased quantum computing in semiconductors. The investigation of spin-dependent transport processes in semiconductors is far from complete.…”

The Current Crowding Effect in ZnO Nanowires with a Metal Contact

“…The microscale contact scaling will result in a reduced depletion width [26]. Leonard et al [4] have shown that in the case of nanocontacts with the contact covering the entire end of Ge NWs, the depletion region width will be increased as the NW radius is scaled down.…”

Scanning tunneling microscope study of nanosized metal–semiconductor contacts between ErSi2 nanoislands and Si(001) substrate

“…There are several possible mechanisms corresponding to the deviation such as tunneling, image force lowering, carrier recombination in the depletion region and interface states. Firstly, the effect of carrier recombination in the depletion region on the I-V curve at the forward bias is not significant for our samples, because the number of recombination centers is very small in the space-charge region at the nanometer scale [20]. The effect of interface states also can be ruled out, because our high resolution transmission electron microscope observations show that the nanocontacts formed between ErSi 2 nanoislands and Si(0 0 1) substrate have no interface layer.…”