A Statistical Study on the formation of a-few-dopant quantum dots in highly-doped Si nanowire transistors

Abstract

Single-electron tunneling (SET) transistors have been studied for the past several decades because they are promising for low-power consumption and fundamental-level control of charge. The quantum dots (QDs) that are the main part of an SET transistor have been demonstrated in a variety of materials, but recently dopant-atoms in silicon have also been shown to work as QDs. However, a single conventional dopant-atom has usually a shallow ground state energy level below the conduction band edge (∼45 meV). This means that the tunnel barrier is relatively low and thermally-activated current can flow over the barrier. Therefore, the operation of dopant-atom SET transistors remains limited to low temperatures. In this work, we statistically analyze the key factors for raising the SET operation temperature up to room temperature (>300 K).