Spatially resolved resonant tunneling on single atoms in silicon

Abstract

The ability to control single dopants in solid-state devices has opened the way towards reliable quantum computation schemes. In this perspective it is essential to understand the impact of interfaces and electric fields, inherent to address coherent electronic manipulation, on the dopants atomic scale properties. This requires both fine energetic and spatial resolution of the energy spectrum and wave-function, respectively. Here we present an experiment fulfilling both conditions: we perform transport on single donors in silicon close to a vacuum interface using a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) in the single electron tunneling regime. The spatial degrees of freedom of the STM tip provide a versatility allowing a unique understanding of electrostatics. We obtain the absolute energy scale from the thermal broadening of the resonant peaks, allowing to deduce the charging energies of the donors. Finally we use a rate equations model to derive the current in presence of an excited state, highlighting the benefits of the highly tunable vacuum tunnel rates which should be exploited in further experiments. This work provides a general framework to investigate dopant-based systems at the atomic scale.

arXiv comment15 pages, 4 figures

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Cited by in corpus (10)

• Spatial Metrology of Dopants in Silicon with Exact Lattice Site Precision
• Time-Resolved Single Dopant Charge Dynamics in Silicon
• Electrostatic Landscape of a H-Silicon Surface Probed by a Moveable Quantum Dot
• Valley interference and spin exchange at the atomic scale in silicon
• Two-electron states of a group V donor in silicon from atomistic full configuration interaction
• Donor Wavefunctions in Si Gauged by STM Images
• Multi-valley envelope function equations and effective potentials for P impurity in silicon
• Valley filtering and spatial maps of coupling between silicon donors and quantum dots
• Exact location of dopants below the Si(001):H surface from scanning tunnelling microscopy and density functional theory
• Quasiparticle excitations in a one-dimensional interacting topological insulator: Application for dopant-based quantum simulation