Single electron tunneling transistor with tunable barriers using silicon nanowire metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor

We have achieved the operation of single-electron tunneling (SET) transistors with gate-induced electrostatic barriers using silicon nanowire metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) structures. The conductance of tunnel barriers is tunable by more than three orders of magnitude. By using the flexible control of the tunable barriers, the systematic evolution from a single charge island to double islands was clearly observed. We obtained excellent reproducibility in the gate capacitances: values on the order of 10 aF, with the variation smaller than 1 aF. This flexibility and controllability both demonstrate that the device is highly designable to build a variety of SET devices based on complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor technology. (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics.