Single-Electron Transfer by Inter-Dopant Coupling Tuning in Doped Nanowire Silicon-on-Insulator Field-Effect Transistors

We demonstrate tunable single-electron turnstile operation in doped-nanowire silicon-on-insulator field-effect transistors. In these structures, electron transport occurs through dopant-induced quantum dots. We show that the substrate silicon can be used as a back gate to modulate the inter-dot coupling, which dictates the overlap between Coulomb domains in the charge stability diagrams of these devices. Since this overlap is a necessary requirement for single-electron turnstile, this procedure allows the optimization of the conditions for single-electron turnstile in doped-nanowire field-effect transistors. (C) 2009 The Japan Society of Applied Physics