NANOSTRUCTURES AS
SINGLE ELECTRON
TRANSISTOR
(SET)
Content
Basics
Single Electron Transistors
Components
Synthesis
Coulomb blockade effect
Working
Application
Basics
Transistors- It is a device made up of semiconducting
material, used as an amplifier, control the flow of
current and a switch. A voltage or current applied to one
pair of the transistor's terminals controls the current
through another pair of terminals.
Capacitors- A device used to store an electric charge,
consisting of one or more pairs of conductors separated
by an insulator.
Quantum Dots- Quantum dots (QD) are very small
semiconductor particles, only several nanometres in
size, so small that their optical and electronic properties
differ from those of larger particles.
SINGLE ELECTRON TRANSISTORS
SET
SET
According to famous Moore's law, transistor size was deceasing every two-
three years but this aggressive scaling causes its operation deficiencies in
nanometer devices such as increased leakage current and static power
dissipation.
The current in Field Effect Transistors (FET) devices flow when many
electrons move simultaneously from the source to the drain in the FET.
The reduction of the number of electrons in a switching transition decreases
circuit power dissipation and also it raises the possibility of circuit integration
in higher levels. Therefore Fulton and Dolan designed a transistor named
single electron transistor (SET) that worked based on the tunnelling only one
electron in 1987.
This device not only has higher speed operation and lower delay time but also
has lower power dissipation than advanced FETs including CNTFET and
GNRFET [1].
Synthesis
Schematic drawing of a typical nanostructure
made from a monolayer graphene flake. The
graphene sheet is deposited on a substrate
consisting of highly doped silicon (Si++ back
gate) and 295 nm silicon oxide (SiO2).
Depositing a Chromium/Gold layer (Cr/Au
contact) directly on the flake makes an ohmic
contact. Metallic top-gates have to be
separated from the flake by thin dielectric
insulators (top gate oxide).
In the drawing, the top-gate has been cut open
in order to show the graphene structure below.
In-plane gates made of graphene (graphene
side gate) are obtained by etching a trench into
the graphene sheet.
Scanning force microscope images of
graphene nanostructures. (a) A nanoribbon
with 85 nm width and 500 nm length. (b) A
single-electron
transistor device with source (S) and drain
(D) contacts and a number of in-plane gates
(for example the plunger gate PG). (c) A
device consisting of two single-electron
transistors coupled in series. (d) A single-
electron transistor with a graphene
nanoribbons serving as an integrated charge
detector (CD).
Components
•A single electron transistor
(SET) is a 3-terminal
nanoelectronic device.
•Quantum dots of few
nanometer size generally
made up of group III and V
elements, Example AlAs,
GaAs, etc. It is a finite well for
the electron and has the
ability to trap electron.
•Source and Drain are usually
made up of metal.
Coulomb blockade effect
Channel over which the quantum dot or island is placed which act as a
capacitor, E=(e^2/2C).
Electrons can tunnel to the dot by applying voltage to the gate electrode which
is capacitively coupled to the dot. If one electron tunnels to the dot, the
increase of the electrostatic (Coulomb charging) energy U in the system is
expressed as
U = (e^2/2Cdot)
When the dot becomes sufficiently small (Cdot is small) and U starts to exceed
the thermal energy, even a single electron cannot tunnel to the dot without the
help of external gate bias to overcome the Coulomb repulsion of the dot. This
effect is called Coulomb blockade and it is the basic of the operation of SETs
[2].
Working
Single electron transistor tries to control the flow of single electron.
The conduction occurs via quantum tunnelling process through the source-
QD-drain path, while the island potential can be tuned by a capacitively
coupled gate.
SET works by the electron tunneling between two junctions. Each tunnel
junction is equivalent to a RC parallel circuit. This circuit not only switches
current to the island but also prevents moving electron to the island by the
coulomb blockade effect.
When an electron transfers through a tunnel junction then its capacitor
becomes charged up to Vb = e/ C and then the coulomb blockade will be
occurred, so the second electron can't move into the island.
The other coulomb blockade conditions will occur if the tunneling resistance
is less than 25.81kΩ and thermal energy is more than the charging energy
(Ec=(e^2/2C) ; The necessary energy to transfer the single electron to the
island) .
Therefore decreasing the capacitance and the resistance on SET tunnel
junctions can raise the speed of current flow and SET operation due to lower
time of the electron tunneling and smaller coulomb blockade range. On the
other hand both capacitance and resistance of SET island have impact on the
tunnel junction parameters.
Application
Single Electron Transistor for gas sensing applications
The adsorption of CO, CO2, NH3 and NO2 on monolayer's of Graphene, MoS2
and Phosphorene are investigated by the reseacher to find their most stable
configurations and relative orientations on the host layers.
A Single Electron Transistor (SET) device made of such materials is proposed
here as a futuristic low power device prototype for sensing purposes.
Phosphorene offers highest strength of physio-adsorption for all these
molecules, indicating its superiority than the other two materials.
The wide temperature range of operation, extreme detection sensitivity and
the versatility of the 2D materials for gas sensing make these SET devices very
powerful candidates for practical application. (Ray et al. 2016)
Single-Electron Spectroscopy
One of the most important application of single-electron electrometry is the
possibility of measuring the electron addition energies (and hence the energy
level distribution) in quantum dots and other nanoscale objects.
Programmable Single Electron Transistor Logic
The charged around the QD of the SET namely an SET island shift the phase
of coulomb oscillation, the writing/erasing operation of memory function
which inject/eject charge to/from the memory node near the SET island ,
makes it possible to tune the phase of coulomb oscillation. If the injected
charge is adequate the phase shift is half period of the coulomb oscillation.
Reference
1. Vahideh KhademHosseini, Daryoosh Dideban ,Mohammad Taghi Ahmadi, Razali
Ismail, International Journal of Electronics and Communications, An Analytical
Approach to Model Capacitance and Resistance of Capped Carbon Nanotube
Single Electron Transistor, 11 April 2018.
2. K Miyaji and T Hiramoto, Elsevier B.V., Silicon Single Electron Transistors
Operating at Room Temperature and Their Applications, 2011.
3. Om Kumar and Manjit Kaur, International journal of VLSI design &
Communication Systems (VLSICS) Vol.1, No.4, Single Electron Transistor:
Applications & Problems, December 2010.
4. T. Ihn, J. Güttinger, F. Molitor, S. Schnez, E. Schurtenberger, A. Jacobsen, S.
Hellmüller, T. Frey, S. Dröscher, C. Stampfer, K. Ensslin, materialstoday,
Graphene single electron transistors, March 2010.
5. S. J. Ray, Sensors & Actuators: B. Chemical, First-principles study of MoS2,
Phosphorene and Graphene based Single Electron Transistor for gas sensing
applications, August 2015.
