Observation of hopping transitions for delocalized electrons by temperature-dependent conductance in silicon junctionless nanowire transistors

We demonstrate transitions of hopping behaviors for delocalized electrons through the discrete dopant-induced quantum dots in n-doped silicon junctionless nanowire transistors by the temperature-dependent conductance characteristics.There are two obvious transition platforms within the critical temperature regimes for the experimental conductance data,which are extracted from the unified transfer characteristics for different temperatures at the gate voltage positions of the initial transconductance gm peak in Vg1 and valley in Vg2. The crossover temperatures of the electron hopping behaviors are analytically determined by the temperature-dependent conductance at the gate voltages Vg1 and Vg2. This finding provides essential evidence for the hopping electron behaviors under the influence of thermal activation and long-range Coulomb interaction.

Influence of dopant concentration on electrical quantum transport behaviors in junctionless nanowire transistors

We discuss the random dopant effects in long channel junctionless transistor associated with quantum confinement effects. The electrical measurement reveals the threshold voltage variability induced by the random dopant fluctuation. Quantum transport features in Hubbard systems are observed in heavily phosphorus-doped channel. We investigate the single electron transfer via donor-induced quantum dots in junctionless nanowire transistors with heavily phosphorus- doped channel, due to the formation of impurity Hubbard bands. While in the lightly doped devices, one-dimensional quantum transport is only observed at low temperature. In this sense, phonon-assisted resonant-tunneling is suppressed due to misaligned levels formed in a few isolated quantum dots at cryogenic temperature. We observe the Anderson-Mott transition from isolate electron state to impurity bands as the doping concentration is increased.

Temperature-dependent subband mobility characteristics in n-doped silicon junctionless nanowire transistor

We have investigated the temperature-dependent effective mobility characteristics in impurity band and conduction subbands of n-doped silicon junctionless nanowire transistors. It is found that the electron effective mobility of the first subband in 2-fold valleys is higher than that of the second subband in 4-fold valleys. There exists a maximum value for the effective subband mobilities at low temperatures, which is attributed to the increase of thermally activated electrons from the ionized donors in the impurity band. The experimental results indicate that the effective subband mobility is temperature-dependent on the electron interactions by thermal activation, impurity scattering, and intersubband scattering.

Coulomb blockade and hopping transport behaviors of donor-induced quantum dots in junctionless transistors

The ionized dopants, working as quantum dots in silicon nanowires, exhibit potential advantages for the development of atomic-scale transistors. We investigate single electron tunneling through a phosphorus dopant induced quantum dots array in heavily n-doped junctionless nanowire transistors. Several subpeaks splittings in current oscillations are clearly observed due to the coupling of the quantum dots at the temperature of 6 K. The transport behaviors change from resonance tunneling to hoping conduction with increased temperature. The charging energy of the phosphorus donors is approximately 12.8 meV. This work helps clear the basic mechanism of electron transport through donor-induced quantum dots and electron transport properties in the heavily doped nanowire through dopant engineering.

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.

Single-electron transport through single and coupling dopant atoms in silicon junctionless nanowire transistor

We investigated single-electron tunneling through single and coupling dopant-induced quantum dots(QDs) in silicon junctionless nanowire transistor(JNT) by varying temperatures and bias voltages. We observed that two possible charge states of the isolated QD confined in the axis of the initial narrowest channel are successively occupied as the temperature increases above 30 K. The resonance states of the double single-electron peaks emerge below the Hubbard band, at which several subpeaks are clearly observed respectively in the double oscillated current peaks due to the coupling of the QDs in the atomic scale channel. The electric field of bias voltage between the source and the drain could remarkably enhance the tunneling possibility of the single-electron current and the coupling strength of several dopant atoms. This finding demonstrates that silicon JNTs are the promising potential candidates to realize the single dopant atom transistors operating at room temperature.

Observation of source/drain bias-controlled quantum transport spectrum in junctionless silicon nanowire transistor

We investigate the influence of source and drain bias voltages(V_(DS))on the quantum sub-band transport spectrum in the 10-nm width N-typed junctionless nanowire transistor at the low temperature of 6 K.We demonstrate that the transverse electric field introduced from V_(DS) has a minor influence on the threshold voltage of the device.The transverse electric field plays the role of amplifying the gate restriction effect of the channel.The one-dimensional(1D)-band dominated transport is demonstrated to be modulated by V_(DS) in the saturation region and the linear region,with the sub-band energy levels in the channel(E_(channel))intersecting with Fermi levels of the source(E_(fS))and the drain(E_(fD))in turn as V_(g) increases.The turning points from the linear region to the saturation region shift to higher gate voltages with V_(DS) increase because the higher Fermi energy levels of the channel required to meet the situation of E_(fD)=E_(channel).We also find that the bias electric field has the effect to accelerate the thermally activated electrons in the channel,equivalent to the effect of thermal temperature on the increase of electron energy.Our work provides a detailed description of the bias-modulated quantum electronic properties,which will give a more comprehensive understanding of transport behavior in nanoscale devices.

Unitary transformation of general nonoverlapping-image multimode interference couplers with any input and output ports

An explanation of optical unitary transformation is presented for general nonoverlapping-image multimode interference(MMI)couplers with any number of input and output ports.The light transformation in the MMI coupler can be considered as an optical field matrix acting on an input light column vector.We investigate the general phase principle of output light image.The complete proof of nonoverlapping-image MMI coupler’s optical unitarity along with the phase analysis of matrix element is provided.Based on a two-dimensional finite-difference time-domain(2 D-FDTD)simulation,the unitary transformation is obtained for a 4×4 nonoverlapping-image MMI coupler within a deviation of 4×10-2 for orthogonal invariance and 8×10-2 for transvection invariance in the C-band spectral range.A compact 1×4 splitter based on cascaded MMI coupler is proposed,showing a phase deviation less than 5.4°while maintaining a low-loss performance in C-band spectra.