No Arabic abstract
Modulation-doped AlGaAs/GaAs heterostructures are utilized extensively in the study of quantum transport in nanostructures, but charge fluctuations associated with remote ionized dopants often produce deleterious effects. Electric field-induced carrier systems offer an attractive alternative if certain challenges can be overcome. We demonstrate a field-effect transistor in which the active channel is locally devoid of modulation-doping, but silicon dopant atoms are retained in the ohmic contact region to facilitate reliable low-resistance contacts. A high quality two-dimensional electron gas is induced by a field-effect and is tunable over a wide range of density. Device design, fabrication, and low temperature (T= 0.3K) transport data are reported.
Nanoelectronic devices embedded in the two-dimensional electron system (2DES) of a GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure enable a large variety of applications from fundamental research to high speed transistors. Electrical circuits are thereby commonly defined by creating barriers for carriers by selective depletion of a pre-existing 2DES. Here we explore an alternative approach: we deplete the 2DES globally by applying a negative voltage to a global top gate and screen the electric field of the top gate only locally using nanoscale gates placed on the wafer surface between the plane of the 2DES and the top gate. Free carriers are located beneath the screen gates and their properties can be controlled by means of geometry and applied voltages. This method promises considerable advantages for the definition of complex circuits by the electric field effect as it allows to reduce the number of gates and simplify gate geometries. Examples are carrier systems with ring topology or large arrays of quantum dots. Here, we present a first exploration of this method pursuing field effect, Hall effect and Aharonov-Bohm measurements to study electrostatic, dynamic and coherent properties.
We consider the contribution of electron-electron interactions to the orbital magnetization of a two-dimensional electron gas, focusing on the ballistic limit in the regime of negligible Landau-level spacing. This regime can be described by combining diagrammatic perturbation theory with semiclassical techniques. At sufficiently low temperatures, the interaction-induced magnetization overwhelms the Landau and Pauli contributions. Curiously, the interaction-induced magnetization is third-order in the (renormalized) Coulomb interaction. We give a simple interpretation of this effect in terms of classical paths using a renormalization argument: a polygon must have at least three sides in order to enclose area. To leading order in the renormalized interaction, the renormalization argument gives exactly the same result as the full treatment.
We achieved ohmic contacts down to 5 K on standard n-doped Ge samples by creating a strongly doped thin Ge layer between the metallic contacts and the Ge substrate. Thanks to the laser doping technique used, Gas Immersion Laser Doping, we could attain extremely large doping levels above the solubility limit, and thus reduce the metal/doped Ge contact resistance. We tested independently the influence of the doping concentration and doped layer thickness, and showed that the ohmic contact improves when increasing the doping level and is not affected when changing the doped thickness. Furthermore, we characterised the doped Ge/Ge contact, showing that at high doping its contact resistance is the dominant contribution to the total contact resistance.
We study theoretically transverse photoconductivity induced by circularly polarized radiation, i.e. the photovoltaic Hall effect, and linearly polarized radiation causing intraband optical transitions in two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG). We develop a microscopic theory of these effects based on analytical solution of the Boltzmann equation for arbitrary electron spectrum and scattering mechanism. We calculate the transverse photoconductivity of 2DEG with parabolic and linear dispersion for short-range and Coulomb scatterers at different temperatures. We show that the transverse electric current is significantly enhanced at frequencies comparable to the inverse energy relaxation time, whereas at higher frequencies the excitation spectrum and the direction of current depend on the scattering mechanism. We also analyse the effect of thermalization processes caused by electron-electron collisions on the photoconductivity.
Negative longitudinal magnetoresistance (NLMR) has been reported in a variety of materials and has attracted extensive attention as an electrotransport hallmark of topological Weyl semimetals. However, its origin is still under debate. Here, we demonstrate that the NLMR in a two dimensional electron gas can be influenced by the measurement current. While the NLMR persists up to 130 K, its magnitude and magnetic field response become dependent on the applied current below 60 K. The tunable NLMR at low and high currents can be best attributed to quantum interference and disorder scattering effects, respectively. This work uncovers non-Ohmic NLMR in a non-Weyl material and highlights potential effects of the measurement current in elucidating electrotransport phenomena. We also demonstrate that NLMRs can be a valuable phenomenon in revealing the origins of other properties, such as negative MRs in perpendicular magnetic fields.