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Nanodevices and Nanostructures Quantum Wires and Quantum Dots

Wan-Ching Hung

Abstract This article describes how quantum dots and quantum wires are integrating to semiconductor nanostructures and the single electron effects such as quantum confinement, tunnel effect, and Coulomb blockade. In the end, several fabrication processes are introduced. Index TermsQuantum dots, Quantum wires

L=

n ! 2

(2)

Where L = the full width of the well n = a quantum number with the value of any positive integer. ! = de Broglie wavelength
En = n2h2 8mL2

(3)

I. INTRODUCTION

quantum dot typically contains between 1 to 200 atoms in diameter and its length, width, and high are generally defined less than 100nm. The key point determines whether a semiconductor nanostructure is a quantum dot or not is the motion of electrons having 0 degree of freedom. This is retrained by Fermi wavelength (1).
"F = 2!
kF

Where En = the totoal engergy level. n = a quantum number with the value of any positive integer. h = a modified Plancks constant m =the mass of the electron. When the isolation layer in transistor shrinks to nanometer in size, the electrons could tunnel through the potential barrier. The tunneling effect would cause transistors fail but it can also be used to develop scanning tunneling microscope. The ability

(1) Where ! F = the Fermi wavelength; wavelength of carriers that dominate electrical transport. k F = the Fermi wave vector. The Quatum wires confine the motion of electrons or holes to one spatial direction
Fig. 2. Tunneling effect

II. SINGLE ELECTRON EFFECTS When nanodevices work in quantum state, there are 3 effects: quantum confinement, tunneling effect, and Coulomb blockade that can be observed. Quantum confinement effect occurs when one or more of the dimensions of the nanomaterial are smaller than the Fermi wavelength, the boundary conditions of electrons and holes are not infinite and restricted in one or more dimensions. The equation (2), (3) and

of a single electron passes through barrier is called tunneling effect (Figure 2). In order to let single electron tunnel through one atom to another atom, the electron must overcome the Coulomb blockade energy. The equation (4) defines the Coulomb blockade energy. (4) Ec = e 2 / 2C! Where Ec = the Coulomb blockade energy, which is the repelling energy of the previous electron to the next electron. e = the electron charge C! = the capacitance. The Coulomb blockade is the increased resistance at small bias voltage of an electronic device comprising at lease one low-capacitance tunnel junction. The tunnel junction capacitor is charged with one elementary charge by the tunneling electron. If the capacitance is very small, the voltage buildup can be large enough to prevent another electron from tunneling. The electrical current is then suppressed at low bias

Fig. 1. Quantum confinement

Figure 1 are the quantum confinement of electrons.

2 voltages and the resistance of the device is no longer constant. The increase of the differential resistance around zero bias is called the Coulomb blockade. quantum well to create nano devices such as single electron transistor and single electron memory. There are four fabrication processes are currently used. The self-assembly method and chemical colloidal method are bottom-up approach. A. Self-assembly method There are two methods to accomplish the process. One of the methods is called dip coating. It dips the material in to solution and washes away the part that is unwanted to form a film. The other method uses molecular-beam epitaxy or chemical vapor deposition to effectively form the quantum dot arrays on specific material under the theory of lattice mismatch. It is a combination of techniques, where particle arrangement is controlled by differences in reactivity a characteristic determined by exposing particles and surfaces to an assortment of chemical treatments. Solar cell, light-emitting diodes, and capsule in drug delivery system are using this process to fabricate. (Figure 5)

III. QUANTUM DOTS AND QUANTUM WIRES APPLICATIONS The quantum dot applications in various fields include blue-laser diodes, single electron transistor (Figure 3), light-emitting devices, etc. The single electron transistor (SET) [1] which is based on Coulomb blockade and tunneling effect is a single electron device in which the addition or subtract of a small numbers of electrons to/from an electrode can be controlled with one-electron precision using the charge effect. These quantum dot applications have the advantages of small size, low power consumption, and high speed.

Fig. 3. Silicon based single electron transistor

The Blue-laser diodes are a kind of quantum dot lasers which succeeds in minimizing temperature sensitive output fluctuations, something that not possible with previous semiconductor lasers. The blue-lasers diodes are made of GaN and used in optical data communications and optical networks. The commonly seen commercial product of blue-laser diodes is used as light source of High Definition DVD. A quantum wire application is nanobarcodes [2] which is used in medical field. Nanobarcodes (Figure 4) are made different quantum wires of different metals that have different reflectivity. Barcode readout is accomplished by bright field reflectance imaging, typically using blue illumination to enhance contrast between Au and Ag stripes

Fig. 5. Self-assembly method

B. Chemical colloidal method The process is easy and can be used in mass production to produce multilayered quantum dots. An example for chemical colloidal method is to grow CdSe with sizes between 2~6nm. CdSe is a material used to made quantum dot light emitting diodes. Figure 6 is the process flow of how to cap for CdSe. Nanobarcodes is also fabricated by this process.

Fig. 4. Nanobarcodes

IV. FABRICATION METHODS There are 2 ways to realize nanodevices. One of them is based on the current integrated circuits to minimize the line width. It is called top-down approach. The electronic devices only shrink in size and the basic structure of electronic devices do not change. The other way is called bottom-up approach. It is totally different from the structure of current integrated circuit and it uses quantum dot, quantum wire, and

Fig. 6. Synthesis of CdSe

C. Abbreviations and Acronyms Besides photolithography which is the most commercial form, a large number of promising of promising nanolithography methods are including electron bream lithography, ion beam lithography, nanoimpring lithography [3], and dip pen nanolithography [4].

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[6] Nanotechnology Knowledge Working Group, Nanotechnology Handbook, Nikkei Business Publications, Japan, 2003.

Fig. 7. Dip pen nanolithography

Etching is the process of using liquid acids or gas to dissolve away or remove unwanted material such as semiconductor material. Dry etching and wet etching are two commonly known processes in semiconductor fabrication. D. Split-gate approach It uses additional voltage to create 2 dimensional confinements to control the shape and size of the quantum dots gate. It means metal gates with a sub-micron sized gap between them are deposited onto a semiconductor substrate. (Figure 5)

Fig. 8. The concept of split-gate technique[5]

The black regions correspond to metallic gates and in the figure 5 on the left the gates are grounded and there is no effect on the underlying two dimensional electrons. In the figure 5 on the right, a negative voltage is applied to the depleting electrons underneath them and leaving a narrow region of electrons in the gap between the gates. The split-gate approach offers a number of advantages compared to other techniques available for the fabrication of nanostructures. Electrical contact to the nanostructure of interest is easily achieved. Its a combination of electron beam lithography, evaporation, lift off, and contact annealing. However, this method is suitable for research. REFERENCES
[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] K. K. Likharvey, Single-Electron Devices and Their Applications, Proc. IEEE, vol. 87, no. 4, pp. 606-632. 1999. http://research.chem.psu.edu/cdkgroup/sensors.htm http://www.princeton.edu/~chouweb/newproject/page3.html http://www.chem.northwestern.edu/~mkngrp/dpn.htm http://www.eas.asu.edu/~bird/