McRae AC, Tayari V, Porter JM, Champagne AR. Giant electron-hole transport asymmetry in ultra-short quantum transistors.
Nat Commun 2017;
8:15491. [PMID:
28561024 PMCID:
PMC5460015 DOI:
10.1038/ncomms15491]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/15/2016] [Accepted: 04/04/2017] [Indexed: 11/15/2022] Open
Abstract
Making use of bipolar transport in single-wall carbon nanotube quantum transistors would permit a single device to operate as both a quantum dot and a ballistic conductor or as two quantum dots with different charging energies. Here we report ultra-clean 10 to 100 nm scale suspended nanotube transistors with a large electron-hole transport asymmetry. The devices consist of naked nanotube channels contacted with sections of tube under annealed gold. The annealed gold acts as an n-doping top gate, allowing coherent quantum transport, and can create nanometre-sharp barriers. These tunnel barriers define a single quantum dot whose charging energies to add an electron or a hole are vastly different (e−h charging energy asymmetry). We parameterize the e−h transport asymmetry by the ratio of the hole and electron charging energies ηe−h. This asymmetry is maximized for short channels and small band gap tubes. In a small band gap device, we demonstrate the fabrication of a dual functionality quantum device acting as a quantum dot for holes and a much longer quantum bus for electrons. In a 14 nm-long channel, ηe−h reaches up to 2.6 for a device with a band gap of 270 meV. The charging energies in this device exceed 100 meV.
By utilizing electron-hole asymmetry in ultra-short single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) transistors, McRae et al., develop ‘two-in-one' SWCNT quantum devices that can switch from behaving as quantum-dot transistors for holes to quantum buses for electrons by changing the transistor's gate voltage
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