An apparent metal insulator transition in high mobility 2D InAs heterostructures

Abstract

We report on the first experimental observation of an apparent metal insulator transition in a 2D electron gas confined in an InAs quantum well. At high densities we find that the carrier mobility is limited by background charged impurities and the temperature dependence of the resistivity shows a metallic behavior with resistivity increasing with increasing temperature. At low densities we find an insulating behavior below a critical density of $n_c=5\times 10^{10}$ cm${}^{-2}$ with the resistivity decreasing with increasing temperature. We analyze this transition using a percolation model arising from the failure of screening in random background charged impurities. We also examine the percolation transition experimentally by introducing remote ionized impurities at the surface. Using a bias during cool-down, we modify the screening charge at the surface which strongly affects the critical density. Our study shows that transition from a metallic to an insulating phase in our system is due to percolation transition.

References in corpus (3)

• The Observation of Percolation-Induced 2D Metal-Insulator Transition in a Si MOSFET
• Transport and percolation in a low-density high-mobility two-dimensional hole system
• Tuning spin orbit interaction in high quality gate-defined InAs one-dimensional channels

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• Magnetic Field Inducing Zeeman Splitting and Anomalous Conductance Reduction of Half-integer Quantized Plateaus in InAs Quantum Wires
• Gating of two-dimensional electron systems in InGaAs/InAlAs heterostructures: the role of the intrinsic InAlAs deep donor defects
• Bound state-continuum resonance transition in a shallow quantum well
• Clean quantum point contacts in an InAs quantum well grown on a lattice-mismatched InP substrate