Related papers: Nanometer-Scale Metallic Grains Connected with Ato…
We consider mesoscopic fluctuations of the Coulomb blockade oscillations in a disordered metallic grain in an external magnetic field coupled to a metallic lead by a tunneling contact with a large conductance $g_T$ and capacitively coupled…
We have developed a technology to reproducibly make gaps with distance control on the single atom scale. The gold contacts are flat on the nanometre scale and are fabricated on an oxidized aluminium film that serves as a gate. We show that…
Quantum dots and single-molecule transistors may exhibit level crossings induced by tuning external parameters such as magnetic field or gate voltage. For Coulomb blockaded devices, this shows up as an inelastic cotunneling threshold in the…
We have observed anomalous transport properties for a 50 nm Bi dot in the Coulomb-blockade regime. Over a range of gate voltages, Coulomb blockade peaks are suppressed at low bias, and dramatic structure appears in the current at higher…
Electrical contacts between nano-engineered systems are expected to constitute the basic building blocks of future nano-scale electronics. However, the accurate characterization and understanding of electrical contacts at the nano-scale is…
The formation and rupture of atomic-sized contacts is modelled by means of molecular dynamics simulations. Such nano-contacts are realized in scanning tunnelling microscope and mechanically controlled break junction experiments. These…
Systems of quantum dots (QD) connected to leads exhibit periodic conductance peaks as a function of gate voltage arising from the Coulomb blockade effect \cite{review1,review2,review3}. Much effort goes into minimizing the size of QDs and…
We report on Coulomb blockade and Coulomb diamond measurements on an etched, tunable single-layer graphene quantum dot. The device consisting of a graphene island connected via two narrow graphene constrictions is fully tunable by three…
The current-voltage characteristics through a metallic quantum dot which is well coupled to a metallic lead are measured. It is shown that the I-V curves are composed of two contributions. One is a suppression of the tunneling conductivity…
We study Coulomb blockade effects in the thermodynamic quantities of a weakly disordered metallic grain coupled to a metallic lead by a tunneling contact with a large conductance $g_T$. We consider the case of broken time-reversal symmetry…
We study transport through a strongly correlated quantum dot and show that Coulomb blockade can appear even in the presence of perfect contacts. This conclusion arises from numerical calculations of the conductance for a microscopic model…
We study theoretically a quantum dot in the quantum Hall regime that is strongly coupled to a single lead via a point contact. We find that even when the transmission through the point contact is perfect, important features of the Coulomb…
We study the equilibrium properties of a quantum dot connected to a bulk lead by a single-mode quantum point contact. The ground state energy and other thermodynamic characteristics of the grain show periodic dependence on the gate voltage…
We analyze and clarify the transport properties of a one-dimensional metallic nanoparticle array with interaction between charges restricted to charges placed in the same conductor. We study the threshold voltage, the I-V curves and the…
We consider charge quantization in a small superconducting grain that is contacted by a normal-metal electrode and is controlled by a capacitively coupled gate. At zero temperature and zero conductance $G$ between the grain and the…
Metallic nanoparticles offer possibilities to build basic electric devices with new functionality and improved performance. Due to the small volume and the resulting low self-capacitance, each single nanoparticle exhibits a high charging…
We report low-temperature transport experiments on single-wall nanotubes with metallic leads of varying contact quality, ranging from weak tunneling to almost perfect transmission. In the weak tunneling regime, where Coulomb blockade…
Niobium thin film nanostructures were fabricated using electron beam lithography and a liftoff process involving a four layer resist system. Wires having micrometres in length and below 200 nm in width were deposited on an insulating…
We report the low temperature current-voltage (I-V) characteristics studies in quasi-one dimensional conducting polymer nanofibers. We find a threshold voltage Vt below which little current flows at temperatures below 30-40 K. For V > Vt…
We study the effects of Coulomb interaction and inter-grain quantum tunnelling in an array of metallic grains using the phase-functional approach for temperatures $T$ well below the charging energy $E_{c}$ of individual grains yet large…