Fabrication and Characterization of a Single Electron Transistor Based on a Silicon-on-Insulator

A single electron transistor based on a silicon-on-insulator is successfully fabricated with electron-beam nano- lithography, inductively coupled plasma etching, thermal oxidation and other techniques. The unique design of the pattern inversion is used, and the pattern is transferred to be negative in the electron-beam lithography step. The oxidation process is used to form the silicon oxide tunneling barriers, and to further reduce the effective size of the quantum dot. Combinations of these methods offer advantages of good size controllability and accuracy, high reproducibility, low cost, large-area contacts, allowing batch fabrication of single electron transistors and good integration with a radio-frequency tank circuit. The fabricated single electron transistor with a quantum dot about 50nto in diameter is demonstrated to operate at temperatures up to 70K. The charging energy of the Coulomb island is about 12.5meV.

A Silicon Cluster Based Single Electron Transistor with Potential Room-Temperature Switching

We demonstrate the fabrication of a single electron transistor device based on a single ultra-small silicon quantum dot connected to a gold break junction with a nanometer scale separation. The gold break junction is created through a controllable electromigration process and the individual silicon quantum dot in the junction is deter- mined to be a Si 170 cluster. Differential conductance as a function of the bias and gate voltage clearly shows the Coulomb diamond which confirms that the transport is dominated by a single silicon quantum dot. It is found that the charging energy can be as large as 300meV, which is a result of the large capacitance of a small silicon quantum dot （-1.8 nm）. This large Coulomb interaction can potentially enable a single electron transistor to work at room temperature. The level spacing of the excited state can be as large as 10meV, which enables us to manipulate individual spin via an external magnetic field. The resulting Zeeman splitting is measured and the g factor of 2.3 is obtained, suggesting relatively weak electron-electron interaction in the silicon quantum dot which is beneficial for spin coherence time.

Annealing effect of platinum-incorporated nanowires created by focused ion/electron-beam-induced deposition

Focused ion-beam-induced deposition （FIBID） and focused electron-beam-induced deposition （FEBID） are conve- nient and useful in nanodevice fabrication. Since the deposition is from the organometallic platinum precursor, the con- ductive lines directly written by focused ion-beam （FIB） and focused electron-beam （FEB） are carbon-rich materials. We discuss an alternative approach to enhancing the platinum content and improving the conductivity of the conductive leads produced by FIBID and FEBID, namely an annealing treatment. Annealing in pure oxygen at 500 ℃ for 30 min enhances the platinum content values from ~ 18% to 30% and ~ 50% to 90% of FIBID and FEBID, respectively. Moreover, we find that thin films will be formed in the FIBID and FEBID processes. The annealing treatment is helpful to avoid the current leakage caused by these thin films. A single electron transistor is fabricated by FEBID and the current-voltage curve shows the Coulomb blockade effect.

Ternary logic circuit design based on single electron transistors

Based on the I-V characteristics and the function of adjustable threshold voltage of a single electron transistor （SET）, we design the basic ternary logic circuits, which have been simulated by SPICE and their power and transient characteristics have been extensively analyzed. The simulation results indicate that the proposed circuits exhibit a simpler structure, smaller signal delay and lower power.

A sensitive charge scanning probe based on silicon single electron transistor

Single electron transistors（SETs） are known to be extremely sensitive electrometers owing to their high charge sensitivity. In this work, we report the design, fabrication, and characterization of a silicon-on-insulatorbased SET scanning probe. The fabricated SET is located about 10 m away from the probe tip. The SET with a quantum dot of about 70 nm in diameter exhibits an obvious Coulomb blockade effect measured at 4.1 K. The Coulomb blockade energy is about 18 me V, and the charge sensitivity is in the order of 10^-（5）–10（^-3）e/Hz^（1/2）. This SET scanning probe can be used to map charge distribution and sense dynamic charge fluctuation in nanodevices or circuits under test, realizing high sensitivity and high spatial resolution charge detection.

Long-range ordering of composites for organic electronics:TIPS-pentacene single crystals with incorporated nano-fibers

Multi-component active materials are widely used for organic electronic devices, with every component contributing complementary and synergistic optoelectronic functions. Mixing these components generally leads to lowered crystallinity and weakened charge transport. Therefore, preparing the active materials without substantially disrupting the crystalline lattice is highly desired. Here, we show that crystallization of TIPS-pentacene from solutions in the presence of fluorescent nanofibers of a perylene bisimide derivative （PBI） leads to formation of composites with nanoflber guest incorporated in the crystal host. In spite of the binary composite structure, the TIPS-pentacene maintains the single- crystalline nature. As a result, the incorporation of the PB1 guest introduces additional fluorescence function but does not significantly reduce the charge transport property of the TIPS-pentacene host, exhibiting field-effect mobility as high as 3.34 cm^2 V^-1 s^-1 even though 26.4% of the channel area is taken over by the guest. As such, this work provides a facile approach toward high-performance multifunctional organic electronic materials.