Coulomb-Blockade Charge-Transport Mechanism in Band-to-Band Tunneling in Heavily-Doped Low-Dimensional Silicon Esaki Diodes

Band-to-band tunneling (BTBT), with its key role as a transport mechanism in Esaki (tunnel) diodes, has been studied extensively for about 60 years. In such devices, it is expected that energy states of ionized dopants in the depletion-layer can affect the BTBT mechanism. In this paper, we introduce the observation and analysis of a novel transport mechanism in Si Esaki diodes: single-charge BTBT transport mediated by donor-cluster quantum-dots, statistically expected in the depletion-layer of nanoscale Esaki diodes. This demonstration can open new pathways for band-to-band tunneling devices.