No Arabic abstract
Advanced synthesis of semiconductor nanowires (NWs) enables their application in diverse fields, notably in chemical and electrical sensing, photovoltaics, or quantum electronic devices. In particular, Indium Arsenide (InAs) NWs are an ideal platform for quantum devices, e.g. they may host topological Majorana states. While the synthesis has been continously perfected, only few techniques were developed to tailor individual NWs after growth. Here we present three wet chemical etch methods for the post-growth morphological engineering of InAs NWs on the sub-100 nm scale. The first two methods allow the formation of self-aligned electrical contacts to etched NWs, while the third method results in conical shaped NW profiles ideal for creating smooth electrical potential gradients and shallow barriers. Low temperature experiments show that NWs with etched segments have stable transport characteristics and can serve as building blocks of quantum electronic devices. As an example we report the formation of a single electrically stable quantum dot between two etched NW segments.
A highly sensitive charge detector is realized for a quantum dot in an InAs nanowire. We have developed a self-aligned etching process to fabricate in a single step a quantum point contact in a two-dimensional electron gas and a quantum dot in an InAs nanowire. The quantum dot is strongly coupled to the underlying point contact which is used as a charge detector. The addition of one electron to the quantum dot leads to a change of the conductance of the charge detector by typically 20%. The charge sensitivity of the detector is used to measure Coulomb diamonds as well as charging events outside the dot. Charge stability diagrams measured by transport through the quantum dot and charge detection merge perfectly.
Superconductor/semiconductor-nanowire hybrid structures can serve as versatile building blocks to realize Majorana circuits or superconducting qubits based on quantized levels such as Andreev qubits. For all these applications it is essential that the superconductor-semiconductor interface is as clean as possible. Furthermore, the shape and dimensions of the superconducting electrodes needs to be precisely controlled. We fabricated self-defined InAs/Al core/shell nanowire junctions by a fully in-situ approach, which meet all these criteria. Transmission electron microscopy measurements confirm the sharp and clean interface between the nanowire and the in-situ deposited Al electrodes which were formed by means of shadow evaporation. Furthermore, we report on tunnel spectroscopy, gate and magnetic field-dependent transport measurements. The achievable short junction lengths,the observed hard-gap and the magnetic field robustness make this new hybrid structure very attractive for applications which rely on a precise control of the number of sub-gap states, like Andreev qubits or topological systems.
We report the fabrication and characterization of superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs) based on InAs nanowires and vanadium superconducting electrodes. These mesoscopic devices are found to be extremely robust against thermal cycling and to operate up to temperatures of $sim2.5$~K with reduced power dissipation. We show that our geometry allows to obtain nearly-symmetric devices with very large magnetic-field modulation of the critical current. All these properties make these devices attractive for on-chip quantum-circuit implementation.
Correlated charge inhomogeneity breaks the electron-hole symmetry in two-dimensional (2D) bilayer heterostructures which is responsible for non-zero drag appearing at the charge neutrality point. Here we report Coulomb drag in novel drag systems consisting of a two-dimensional graphene and a one dimensional (1D) InAs nanowire (NW) heterostructure exhibiting distinct results from 2D-2D heterostructures. For monolayer graphene (MLG)-NW heterostructures, we observe an unconventional drag resistance peak near the Dirac point due to the correlated inter-layer charge puddles. The drag signal decreases monotonically with temperature ($sim T^{-2}$) and with the carrier density of NW ($sim n_{N}^{-4}$), but increases rapidly with magnetic field ($sim B^{2}$). These anomalous responses, together with the mismatched thermal conductivities of graphene and NWs, establish the energy drag as the responsible mechanism of Coulomb drag in MLG-NW devices. In contrast, for bilayer graphene (BLG)-NW devices the drag resistance reverses sign across the Dirac point and the magnitude of the drag signal decreases with the carrier density of the NW ($sim n_{N}^{-1.5}$), consistent with the momentum drag but remains almost constant with magnetic field and temperature. This deviation from the expected $T^2$ arises due to the shift of the drag maximum on graphene carrier density. We also show that the Onsager reciprocity relation is observed for the BLG-NW devices but not for the MLG-NW devices. These Coulomb drag measurements in dimensionally mismatched (2D-1D) systems, hitherto not reported, will pave the future realization of correlated condensate states in novel systems.
We demonstrate an original method -- based on controlled oxidation -- to create high-quality tunnel junctions between superconducting Al reservoirs and InAs semiconductor nanowires. We show clean tunnel characteristics with a current suppression by over $4$ orders of magnitude for a junction bias well below the Al gap $Delta_0 approx 200,mu {rm eV}$. The experimental data are in close agreement with the BCS theoretical expectations of a superconducting tunnel junction. The studied devices combine small-scale tunnel contacts working as thermometers as well as larger electrodes that provide a proof-of-principle active {em cooling} of the electron distribution in the nanowire. A peak refrigeration of about $delta T = 10,{rm mK}$ is achieved at a bath temperature $T_{bath}approx250-350,{rm mK}$ in our prototype devices. This method opens important perspectives for the investigation of thermoelectric effects in semiconductor nanostructures and for nanoscale refrigeration.