Single Electron Transistor

Ajay kumar Shashank Joshi

Bachelor of Technology, Electronics and Communication Department 3rd year Shivalik College of Engineering Dehradun(Uttarakhand)-248001 ajaykumar07.kumar@gmail.com
shashank.joshi91@yahoo.in

Abstract. Modern techniques of lithography make it possible to confine electrons to sufficiently small dimensions that the quantization of both their charge and their energy are easily observable. When such confined electrons are allowed to tunnel to metallic leads a single electron transistor (SET) is created. This transistor turns on and off again every time one electron is added to the isolated region. Whereas we can understand conventional transistors using classical concepts, the SET is quantum mechanical in an essential way. In fact, there is a close analogy between the confined electrons inside an SET and an atom. In this review, the physics underlying the operation of SETs is explained, and issues of current interest are discussed. I. INTRODUCTION The semiconductor transistor has been one of the most remarkable inventions of all time. It has become the main component of all modern electronics. The miniaturization trend has been very rapid, leading to ever decreasing device sizes and opening endless opportunities to realize things which were considered impossible. To keep up with the pace of large scale integration, the idea of single electron transistors (SETs) has been conceived. The most outstanding property of SETs is the possibility to switch the device from the insulating to the conducting state by adding only one electron to the gate electrode, whereas a common MOSFET needs about 100010,000 electrons. The Coulomb blockade or single-electron charging effect, which allows for the precise control of small numbers of electrons, provides an alternative operating principle for nanometerscale devices. In addition, the reduction in the number of electrons in a switching transition greatly reduces circuit power dissipation, raising the possibility of even higher levels of circuit integration. The report begins with a description of Coulomb blockade, the classical theory which accounts for the switching in SETs. We also discuss the work that has been done on realizing SETs and the digital building blocks like memory and logic. Various structures have been made in which electrons are confined to small volumes in metals or semiconductors. Perhaps not surprisingly, there is a deep analogy between such confined electrons and atoms. Such regions with only dimensions of 1-100 nm and containing

between 1,000 to 1,000,000 nuclei are referred to as quantum dots, artificial atoms or solid state atoms. Such quantum dots form the heart of the SET gates. II. SINGLE ELECTRONICS

A. Principle of single electronics Recent progress in physics and fabrication technology of nanostructures ushered in a new field of electronics called single electronics. We talk about single electronics whenever it is possible to control the movement and position of a single or small number of electrons. We will be discussing about the theory of single electronics including basic theory of orthodox, Kondo theory and coulomb blockade. B. Orthodox theory K. Likharev developed the orthodox theory of single electron tunneling, which quantitatively describes an important charging effect such as coulomb blockade and coulomb oscillation. On the other hand, they also describe an electron transport in an arbitrary single electron circuit consisting of tunnel junctions, capacitors and voltage sources as a sequence of jumps of single electrons. The orthodox theory makes the following approximations: 1. The electron energy quantization inside the conductors is ignored, i.e. the electron energy spectrum is treated as continous. 2. The time Tt of electron tunneling through the barrier is assumed to be negligibly small in comparison with other time scales. 3. Coherent quantum processes consisting of several simultaneous tunneling events are ignored. This condition ensures that the electrons are traversing the insulating gap one at a time. The tunnel resistance should not be too big also because tunneling cannot be occurred. In terms of circuit design, this high tunnel resistance will have an immediate consequence for the maximum speed operation. The tunneling resistance is a quantity that is defined in the situation where a fixed voltage difference V is imposed to the electrodes on either side of barrier. C. Kondo effect

In 1964, Kondo made a startling discovery when considering the scattering from a magnetic ion that interacts with the spins of the conducting electrons. He found that the resistance of a metal increases logarithmically when the temperature is lowered. Hence the name Kondo effect. Kondos theory correctly describes the decrease in resistance at low temperatures. However, it also makes the unphysical prediction that the resistance will be infinite at even lower temperatures. It turns out that Kondos result is correct only above a certain temperature, which came to be known as Kondos temperature, Tk. D. Coulomb blockade A tunnel junction is, in its simplest form, a thin insulating barrier between two conducting electrodes. If the electrodes are superconducting, copper pairs with a charge of two elementary charges carry the current. In the case that the electrodes are normal conducting, i.e. neither superconducting nor semiconducting electrons (with a charge of one elementary charge) carry the current. The following reasoning is for the case of tunnel junctions with an insulating barrier between two normal conducting electrodes. According to the laws of classical electrodynamics, no current can flow through an insulating barrier. According to the laws of quantum mechanics, however, there is a nonvanishing (larger than zero) probability for an electron on oneside of the barrier to reach the other side. When a bias voltage is applied, this means that there will be a current, neglecting additional effects, the tunnelling current will be proportional to the bias voltage. In electrical terms, the tunnel junction behaves as a resistor with a constant resistance, also known as an ohmic resistor. The resistance depends exponentially on the barrier thickness. Typical barrier thicknesses are on the order of one to several nanometers. An arrangement of two conductors with an insulating layer in between not only has a resistance, but also a finite capacitance. The insulator is also called dielectric in this context; the tunnel junction behaves as a capacitor. Due to the discreteness of electrical charge, current through a tunnel junction is a series of events in which exactly one electron passes through the tunnel barrier (we neglect cotunneling, in which two electrons tunnel simultaneously). The tunnel junction capacitor is charged with one elementary charge by the tunnelling electron, causing a voltage buildup. If the capacitance is very small, the voltage buildup can be large enough to prevent another electron from tunnelling. The electrical current is then suppressed at low bias 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. Single electron devices differ from conventional devices in the sense that the electronic transport is governed by quantum mechanics. Single electron devices consist of an island, a region containing localized electrons isolated by tunnel junctions with barriers to electron tunneling. The energy that

determines the transport of electrons through a single-electron device is Helmholtz's free energy, F, which is defined as difference between total energy, stored in the device and work done by power sources, W. The total energy stored includes all components that have to be considered when charging an island with an electron. The change in Helmholtz's free energy a tunnel event causes is a measure of the probability of this tunnel event. The general fact that physical systems tend to occupy lower energy states, is apparent in electrons favouring those tunnel events which reduce the free energy. The components of total energy are: 1) Electron-Electron Interaction: An entirely classical model for electron-electron interaction is based on the electrostatic capacitive charging energy. The interaction arises from the fact, that for every additional charge dq which is transported to a conductor, work has to be done against the field of already present charges residing on the conductor. 2) Fermi Energy: Systems with sufficiently small islands are not adequately described with the above classical model alone. They exhibit second electron-electron interaction energy, namely the change in Fermi energy, when charged with a single electron. 3) Quantum Confinement Energies: With decreasing island size the energy level spacing of electron states increases indirectly proportional to the square of the dot size. E. Observing the coulomb blockade In order for the Coulomb blockade to be observable, the temperature has to be low enough so that the characteristic charging energy (the energy that is required to charge the junction with one elementary charge) is larger than the thermal energy of the charge carriers. For capacitances above 1 femto-farad, this implies that the temperature has to be below about 1 kelvin. To make a tunnel junction in plate condenser geometry with a capacitance of 1 femto-farad, using an oxide layer of electric permittivity 10 and thickness one nanometer, one has to create electrodes with dimensions of approximately 100 by 100 nanometers. This range of dimensions is routinely reached for example by electron beam lithography and appropriate pattern transfer technologies. Another problem for the observation of the Coulomb blockade is the relatively large capacitance of the leads that connect the tunnel junction to the measurement electronics. F. Conditions for coulomb blockade To achieve the Coulomb blockade, three criteria have to be met:

1. The bias voltage must be lower than the elementary

charge divided by the self-capacitance of the island:

Vbias <

e C

2. The thermal kinetic energy of the electron must be

less than the Coulomb repulsion energy which will lead to reduction in current leading to blockade i.e. the thermal energy in the source contact plus the thermal energy in the island, i.e. kBT must be below the charging energy kBT<e2/C or else the electron will be able to pass the QD via thermal excitation. To observe the Coulomb blockade, and SET oscillations, one has to protect the very small tunnel junctions against the shunting influence of the environment. This can be done by surrounding it with thin film resistors. The special and simplest case of the two junction one dimensional array leads us to the device called the single electron transistor.

play a very important role in the working of SET. Quantum dot [QD] is a mesoscopic system in which the addition or removal of a single electron can cause a change in the electrostatic energy or Coulomb energy that is greater than the thermal energy and can control the electron transport into and out of the QD. This sensitivity to individual electrons has led to electronics based on single electrons. For QD, the discrete energy level of the electrons in the QD becomes pronounced, like those in atoms and molecules, so one can talk about artificial atoms and molecules. When the wave functions between two quantum dots overlap, the coupled quantum dots exhibit the properties of a molecule.

3. The tunneling resistance Rt should be greater

than h/e2.

G. Single electron transistor Single electron transistor is a three terminal device which consist of source and drain separated by capacitive region called quantum dot. The tuning of quantum dot is controlled by the gate terminal.

Fig 2: Schematic structure of single electron transistor

In 1985 Dmitri Averin and Konstantin Likharev, then working at the University of Moscow, proposed the idea of singleelectron transistor. Two years later Theodore Fulton and Gerald Dolan at Bell Labs in the US fabricated such a device and demonstrated how it operates. The SET transistor comes in two versions that have been nicknamed "metallic" and "semiconducting", but the principle of both devices is based on the use of insulating tunnel barriers to separate conducting electrodes. Unlike field-effect transistors, single-electron devices are based on an intrinsically quantum phenomenon: the tunnel effect. This is observed when two metallic electrodes are separated by an insulating barrier about 1 nm thick - in other words, just 10 atoms in a row. Electrons at the Fermi energy can "tunnel" through the insulator, even though in classical terms their energy would be too low to overcome the potential barrier. Transport through such a system is dominated by the Coulomb repulsion of the electrons. For silicon, the metallic limit can be reached in practice by using a very high doping level. Switching the electron island from a conducting to a non-conducting state by a proper change of gate voltage can be utilized to operate the SET.

Figure 1: A simple diagram showing SET

As we can see from the diagram, just like a MOSFET, SET also has 3 terminals namely source, drain and gate. In SET, between source and drain, is present a capacitive region called quantum dot(QD) connected to source and drain through two tunneling junctions. These tunneling junctions along with QD

1)

Operation of SET

The key point is that charge passes through the island in quantized units. For an electron to hop onto the island, its
2

energy must equal the Coulomb energy e /2C. When both the gate and bias voltages are zero, electrons do not have enough energy to enter the island and current does not flow. As the bias voltage between the source and drain is increased, an electron can pass through the island when the energy in the system reaches the Coulomb energy. This effect is known as the Coulomb blockade, and the critical voltage needed to transfer an electron onto the island, equal to e/C, is called the Coulomb gap voltage. Now imagine that the bias voltage is kept below the Coulomb gap voltage. If the gate voltage is increased, the energy of the initial system (with no electrons on the island) gradually increases, while the energy of the system with one excess electron on the island gradually decreases. At the gate voltage corresponding to the point of maximum slope on the Coulomb staircase, both of these configurations equally qualify as the lowest energy states of the system. This lifts the Coulomb blockade, allowing electrons to tunnel into and out of the island. The Coulomb blockade is lifted when the gate capacitance is charged with exactly minus half an electron. The island is very susceptible to surrounding impurities or stray charges. In order to prevent suppress of coulomb blockade by stray charges or ions it is surrounded by insulators, which means that the charge on it must be quantized in units of e, but the gate is a metallic electrode connected to a plentiful supply of electrons. The charge on the gate capacitor merely represents a displacement of electrons relative to a background of positive ions. If we further increase the gate voltage so that the gate capacitor becomes charged with -e, the island again has only one stable configuration separated from the next-lowestenergy states by the Coulomb energy. The Coulomb blockade is set up again, but the island now contains a single excess electron. The conductance of the SET transistor therefore oscillates between minima for gate charges that are integer multiples of e, and maxima for half-integer multiples of e.
Figure 4: Transfer of electrons is (a) one by one in single electron transistors, which is in contrast with (b) conventional MOSFET where many electrons participate in drain current

Figure 3: Coulomb oscillations in a semiconductor SET

H. Advantages of set The most outstanding property of SETs is the possibility to switch the device from the insulating to the conducting state by adding only one electron to the gate electrode, whereas a common MOSFET needs about 100010,000 electrons. In addition, the switching time of SETs is mainly determined by the RC-time constants of the constrictions that can be made very small. Therefore, it is generally assumed that singleelectron devices have the potential to be much faster than conventional MOSFETs. Moreover it consumes less power for operation. A major problem today is that the transistors cannot be packed very closely due to the heat they generate. Since dissipation can be highly suppressed in these novel devices, they might be especially suited for future applications in single electronics.

I.

Disadvantages of SET

1) Very low voltage gain: Voltage gain is one of the properties of a SET that decreases as SET's are made smaller. This is because voltage gain decreases with decreasing gate capacitance. It is difficult to achieve a large gate capacitance when the island of a SET consists of a single molecule. For the single molecule devices, the gate capacitance can be as small as a few zepto-Farads. In this case, tens of volts have to be applied at the input to

modulate the output by tens of millivolts. This results in a voltage gain on the order of 0.001; the transistors attenuate the signals by a factor of about 1000. The voltage gain in a SET is the ratio of the gate capacitance to the junction capacitance. As the gate capacitance is increased for fixed junction capacitance and fixed temperature, the voltage gain first increases and then it decreases. This is illustrated in Fig. 5(a) where the voltage gain is plotted as a function of gate capacitance for different temperatures. In all of the curves the junction capacitance is assumed to be 0.1 aF. The voltage gain increases with increasing gate capacitance until the charging energy is on the order of kBT and then the voltage gain drops sharply. Thus for every junction capacitance and temperature, there is a maximum voltage gain. Figure 5(b) is a plot of the maximum gain. To determine the maximum gain, both the gate capacitance and the bias current of the SET were varied. The graph shows that it will be very difficult to make SET's with voltage gain greater than one that operates at room temperature. It will be even harder to get them to operate in a dense integrated circuit, which usually has a temperature of about 400 K. For room temperature voltage gain, the junction capacitance will have to be about 0.1 aF with a gate capacitance of 0.3 aF. This kind of SET has not yet been fabricated. So far, the largest voltage gain that has been observed is 5.2 and that was measured at 100 mK.

Moreover, even if these islands are fabricated by any sort of nanolithography, their shape will hardly be absolutely regular. Since in such small conductors the quantum kinetic energy gives a dominant contribution to the electron addition energy (Ek >> Ec,), even small variations in island shape will lead to unpredictable and rather substantial variations in the spectrum of energy levels and hence in the device switching thresholds.

3) Background Charge: The second major problem with single-electron logic circuits is the infamous randomness of the background charge. A single charged impurity trapped in the insulating environment polarizes the island, creating on its surface an image charge Q0 of the order of e. This charge is effectively subtracted from the external charge Qe. 4) Room Temperature Operation: The first big problem with all the known types of single-electron logic devices is the requirement Ec ~ 100 kBT, which in practice means subnanometer island size for room temperature operation. in such small conductors the quantum kinetic energy gives a dominant contribution to the electron addition energy even small variations in island shape will lead to unpredictable and rather substantial variations in the spectrum of energy levels and hence in the device switching thresholds.

Figure 5(a) The voltage gain is plotted as a function of the gate capacitance and temperature for a junction capacitance of 0.1 aF. The voltage gain depends on the bias current. The bias current was adjusted to achieve maximum gain. The bias currents that were used were I = 1 nA at 4.2 K, I = 20 nA at 50 K, I = 50 nA at 100 K, I = 100 nA at 200 K, I = 200 nA at 300 K, I = 200 nA at 400 K, I = 300 nA at 500 K. (b) The maximum voltage gain possible for a given junction capacitance is plotted as a function of temperature. The currents which resulted in the maximum gain are given in the plot.

5) Linking SETs with the Outside Environment: The individual structures patterns which function as logic circuits must be arranged into larger 2D patterns. There are two ideas. The first is to integrating SET as well as related equipments with the existed MOSFET, this is attractive because it can increase the integrating density. The second option is to give up linking by wire, instead utilizing the static electronic force between the basic clusters to form a circuit linked by clusters, which is called quantum cellular automata (QCA). The advantage of QCA is its fast information transfer velocity between cells (almost near optic velocity) via electrostatic interactions only, no wire is needed between arrays and the size of each cell can be as small as 2.5nm, this made them very suitable for high density memory and the next generation quantum computer.

2) Lithography Techniques: The first biggest problem with all single-electron logic devices is the requirement Ec~100kBT,which in practice means sub-nanometer island size for room temperature operation. In VLSI circuits, this fabrication technology level is very difficult.

J.

Applications of set 3) Single electron memory: Single or few-electron memory cells can use the Coulomb blockade in a SET to trap small numbers of electrons on a storage capacitor. Alternatively, the memories may be analogous to FLASH memories with the storage node reduced to the nanometer scale. In the later case, Coulomb blockade effects can also occur but are not essential for device operation. In the following, we discuss these two types of memories. The very low conductance within the SET Coulomb gap may be used to trap charge on a storage capacitor. This type of memory often uses an MTJ (Magnetic Tunnel Junction), where the sub-Coulomb gap conductance can be lower, to control the stored charge.

1) Supersensitive Electrometer: The high sensitivity of single-electron transistors have enabled them as electrometers in unique physical experiments. For example, they have made possible unambiguous observations of the parity effects in superconductors. Absolute measurements of extremely low dc currents (~10-20 A) have been demonstrated. The transistors have also been used in the first measurements of singleelectron effects in single-electron boxes and traps A modified version of the transistor has been used for the first proof of the existence of fractional-charge excitations in the fractional quantum hall effect.

Figure 6: High precision electrometer

2) Programmable Single Electron Transistor Logic: An SET having non volatile memory function is a key for the programmable SET logic. The half period phase shift makes the function of SET complimentary to the conventional SETs. As a result SETs having non-volatile memory function have the functionality of both the conventional (n-MOS like) SETs and the complementary (p-MOS like) SETs. By utilising this fact the function of SET circuit can be programmed, on the basis of function stored by the memory function. 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.

Figure 7: Coulomb blockade memory using an MTJ to trap electron on a storage node.

4) Detection of Microwaves: SET can be effectively used in the detection of microwaves.

5) Charge State logics: The problem of leakage current is solved by the use of another logic device name charge state logic in which single bits of information are presented by the presence/absence of single electrons at certain conducting islands throughout the whole circuit. In these circuits the static currents and power vanish, since there is no dc current in any static state.

III.

CONCLUSION

REFERENCES [1] The single electron transistors and artificial atoms- M.A. Kastner. [2] Single electron transistor literature review- Amiza Rasmi, Uda Hashim. [3] Single electron transistors- Peter Hadley, Ming-Jiunn Lai. [4] http://scribd.com/set [5] Single electron transistors: Applications & Problems- Om Kumar, Manjit Kaur.

Researchers may in future assemble these transistors into molecular versions of silicon chips, but there are still formidable hurdles to cross. SETs could be used for memory device, but even the latest SETs suffer from offset charges, which means that the gate voltage needed to achieve maximum current varies randomly from device to device. Such fluctuations make it impossible to build complex circuits. The future does look bright for these devices. With all the exciting properties of single electron devices, the pace of large scale integration can continue. It is not yet clear whether electronics based on individual molecules and singleelectron effects will replace conventional circuits based on scaled-down versions of field-effect transistors. Only one thing is certain: if the pace of miniaturization continues unabated, the quantum properties of electrons will become crucial in determining the design of electronic devices before the end of the next decade. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT We are thankful to Mr. Vishal Ramola, Head of Department, Electronics and Communication Engineering and also to Mr. Rohan Raj and Mr. Arun Balodi for their constant encouragement and support provided in this report. Our Heartfelt appreciation to Ajay Kumar, Anil Negi, Manish Negi, Madhav Mehta, Mukul Dhiman and Rownaz Haque for their inputs which was a excellent contribution towards preparation of this report.