We present transport measurements of a tunable silicon metal-oxide-semiconductor double quantum dot device with lateral geometry. Experimentally extracted gate-to-dot capacitances show that the device is largely symmetric under the gate voltages appl
ied. Intriguingly, these gate voltages themselves are not symmetric. Comparison with numerical simulations indicates that the applied gate voltages serve to offset an intrinsic asymmetry in the physical device. We also show a transition from a large single dot to two well isolated coupled dots, where the central gate of the device is used to controllably tune the interdot coupling.
By analyzing the temperature ($T$) and density ($n$) dependence of the measured conductivity ($sigma$) of 2D electrons in the low density ($sim10^{11}$cm$^{-2}$) and temperature (0.02 - 10 K) regime of high-mobility (1.0 and 1.5 $times 10^4$ cm$^2$/V
s) Si MOSFETs, we establish that the putative 2D metal-insulator transition is a density-inhomogeneity driven percolation transition where the density-dependent conductivity vanishes as $sigma (n) propto (n - n_p)^p$, with the exponent $p sim 1.2$ being consistent with a percolation transition. The `metallic behavior of $sigma (T)$ for $n > n_p$ is shown to be well-described by a semi-classical Boltzmann theory, and we observe the standard weak localization-induced negative magnetoresistance behavior, as expected in a normal Fermi liquid, in the metallic phase.
