Giant energy storage effect in nanolayer capacitors charged by the field emission tunneling.

We fabricate nanolayer alumina capacitor and apply high electric fields, close to 1 GV m-1, to inject charges in the dielectric. Asymmetric charge distributions have been achieved due to the selectivity of the quantum tunneling process. Namely, the electrons near the Fermi level cannot tunnel intoregions near the cathode, where the total energy would be less than the potential energy. This mechanism exhibits a strong tendency to populate charge traps located near the anode, i.e. the regions where their potential energy is the lowest. Such spatially selective charging of the dielectric allows a permanent bulk charge storage in the dielectric layer, even if the capacitor plates are short-circuited, provided that the temperature is sufficiently low so that the conductivity of the dielectric is negligible. The stored charge can be recovered if the temperature is increased above ~250 K for the dielectric tested, i.e. Al2O3. In our experiments, the total charge stored in the dielectric was up to seven and a half times higher than the charge stored on the capacitor plates. Also, measurements of the breakdown voltage show that the breakdown electric field, i.e. the dielectric strength, is independent of the thickness of the dielectric.

Coulomb barrier creation by means of electronic field emission in nanolayer capacitors.

The main mechanism of energy loss in capacitors with nanoscale dielectric films is leakage currents. Using the example of Al-Al2O3-Al, we show that there are two main contributions, namely the cold field emission effect and the hopping conductivity through the dielectric. Our main finding is that an application of a high electric field, ∼0.6-0.7 GV m-1, causes electrons to penetrate the dielectric. If the temperature is sufficiently low, such electrons become permanently trapped in the dielectric. To achieve a strong charging of the dielectric, the voltage needs to be high enough, so that a field emission occurs from the cathode into the dielectric. Such a strongly charged dielectric layer generates a Coulomb barrier and leads to a suppression of the leakage current. Thus, after the dielectric nanolayer of the capacitor is charged, the field emission and the hopping conductivity are both suppressed, and the hysteresis of the I-V curve disappears. The phenomenon is observed at temperatures up to ∼225 K. It would be advantageous to identify insulators in which the phenomenon of the Coulomb barriers persists even up to the room temperature, but at this time it is not known whether such dielectrics exist and/or can be designed.

Three temperature regimes in superconducting photon detectors: quantum, thermal and multiple phase-slips as generators of dark counts.

We perform measurements of the switching current distributions of three w ≈ 120 nm wide, 4 nm thick NbN superconducting strips which are used for single-photon detectors. These strips are much wider than the diameter of the vortex cores, so they are classified as quasi-two-dimensional (quasi-2D). We discover evidence of macroscopic quantum tunneling by observing the saturation of the standard deviation of the switching distributions at temperatures around 2 K. We analyze our results using the Kurkijärvi-Garg model and find that the escape temperature also saturates at low temperatures, confirming that at sufficiently low temperatures, macroscopic quantum tunneling is possible in quasi-2D strips and can contribute to dark counts observed in single photon detectors. At the highest temperatures the system enters a multiple phase-slip regime. In this range single phase-slips are unable to produce dark counts and the fluctuations in the switching current are reduced.

Precise in situ tuning of the critical current of a superconducting nanowire using high bias voltage pulses.

We present a method for in situ tuning of the critical current (or switching current) and critical temperature of a superconducting MoGe nanowire using high bias voltage pulses. Our main finding is that as the pulse voltage is increased, the nanowire demonstrates a reduction, a minimum and then an enhancement of the switching current and critical temperature. Using controlled pulsing, the switching current of a superconducting nanowire can be set exactly to a desired value. These results correlate with in situ transmission electron microscope imaging where an initially amorphous nanowire transforms into a single crystal nanowire by high bias voltage pulses. We compare our transport measurements to a thermally activated model of Little's phase slips in nanowires.

Superconducting nanowires fabricated using molecular templates.

The application of single molecules as templates for nanodevices is a promising direction for nanotechnology. We use suspended deoxyribonucleic acid molecules or single-walled carbon nanotubes as templates for fabricating superconducting devices and then study these devices at cryogenic temperatures. Because the resulting nanowires are extremely thin, comparable in diameter to the templating molecule itself, their electronic state is highly susceptible to thermal fluctuations. The most important family of these fluctuations are the collective ones, which take the form of Little's phase slips or ruptures of the many-electron organization. These phase slips break the quantum coherence of the superconducting condensate and render the wire slightly resistive (i.e., not fully superconducting), even at temperatures substantially lower than the critical temperature of the superconducting transition. At low temperatures, for which the thermal fluctuations are weak, we observe the effects of quantum fluctuations, which lead to the phenomenon of macroscopic quantum tunneling. The modern fabrication method of molecular templating, reviewed here, can be readily implemented to synthesize nanowires from other materials, such as normal metals, ferromagnetic alloys, and semiconductors.

Magnetoresistance in single-layer graphene: weak localization and universal conductance fluctuation studies.

We report measurements of magnetoresistance in single-layer graphene as a function of gate voltage (carrier density) at 250 mK. By examining signatures of weak localization (WL) and universal conductance fluctuations (UCF), we find a consistent picture of phase coherence loss due to electron-electron interactions. The gate dependence of the elastic scattering terms suggests that the effect of trigonal warping, i.e. the nonlinearity of the dispersion curves, may be strong at high carrier densities, while intra-valley scattering may dominate close to the Dirac point. In addition, a decrease in UCF amplitude with decreasing carrier density can be explained by a corresponding loss of phase coherence.

Nanoslits in silicon chips.

Potassium hydroxide (KOH) etching of a patterned [100] oriented silicon wafer produces V-shaped etch pits. We demonstrate that the remaining thickness of silicon at the tip of the etch pit can be reduced to approximately 5 microm using an appropriately sized etch mask and optical feedback. Starting from such an etched chip, we have developed two different routes for fabricating 100 nm scale slits that penetrate through the macroscopic silicon chip (the slits are approximately 850 microm wide at one face of the chip and gradually narrow to approximately 100-200 nm wide at the opposite face of the chip). In the first process, the etched chips are sonicated to break the thin silicon at the tip of the etch pit and then further KOH etched to form a narrow slit. In the second process, focused ion beam milling is used to etch through the thin silicon at the tip of the etch pit. The first method has the advantage that it uses only low-resolution technology while the second method offers more control over the length and width of the slit. Our slits can be used for preparing mechanically stable, transmission electron microscopy samples compatible with electrical transport measurements or as nanostencils for depositing nanowires seamlessly connected to their contact pads.

Current-phase relationship, thermal and quantum phase slips in superconducting nanowires made on a scaffold created using adhesive tape.

Quantum phase slippage (QPS) in a superconducting nanowire is a new candidate for developing a quantum bit [Mooij et al. New J. Phys. 2005, 7, 219; Mooij et al. Nat. Phys. 2006, 2, 169; Khlebnikov http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0210019 2007]. It has also been theoretically predicted that the occurrence of QPS significantly changes the current-phase relationship (CPR) of the wire due to the tunneling between topologically different metastable states [Khlebnikov Phys. Rev. B 2008, 78, 014512]. We present studies on the microwave response of the superconducting nanowires to reveal their CPRs. First, we demonstrate a simple nanowire fabrication technique, based on commercially available adhesive tapes, which allows making thin superconducting wire from different metals. We compare the resistance vs temperature curves of Mo(76)Ge(24) and Al nanowires to the classical and quantum models of phase slips. In order to describe the experimentally observed microwave responses of these nanowires, we use the McCumber-Stewart model [McCumber J. Appl. Phys. 1968, 39, 3113; Stewart Appl. Phys. Lett. 1968, 12, 277], which is generalized to include either classical or quantum CPR.

Quantum interference device made by DNA templating of superconducting nanowires.

The application of single molecules as templates for nanodevices is a promising direction for nanotechnology. We used a pair of suspended DNA molecules as templates for superconducting two-nanowire devices. Because the resulting wires are very thin, comparable to the DNA molecules themselves, they are susceptible to thermal fluctuations typical for one-dimensional superconductors and exhibit a nonzero resistance over a broad temperature range. We observed resistance oscillations in these two-nanowire structures that are different from the usual Little-Parks oscillations. Here, we provide a quantitative explanation for the observed quantum interference phenomenon, which takes into account strong phase gradients created in the leads by the applied magnetic field.

h/e magnetic flux modulation of the energy gap in nanotube quantum dots.

We report experiments on quantum dot single-electron-tunneling (SET) transistors made from short multiwall nanotubes and threaded by magnetic flux. Such systems allow us to probe the electronic energy spectrum of the nanotube and its dependence on the magnetic field. Evidence is provided for the interconversion between gapped (semiconducting) and ungapped (metallic) states. Our tubes exhibit h/e-period magnetic flux dependence, in agreement with simple tight-binding calculations.