Breakthrough in measuring nanostructure dopant energy spectra

One of the key challenges of nanoelectronics is measuring dopant energy spectra in silicon nanostructures, because at this scale energy levels depend largely on the surrounding environment—and the in situ measurement of a single dopant is extremely difficult.
However an INAC-Leti team of researchers seem to have found a way to overcome this hurdle. They have developed a three-grid nanometric system that can be used to couple or individually control two phosphorous dopants to align their ground and/or excited energy states. By quantum tunneling through the two dopants in series at a temperature of 4K, scientists were able to measure the energy difference between each dopant’s ground and excited energy states. These findings were published in the prestigious journal Physical Review Letters.

Contact : marc.sanquer@cea.fr

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