Rectification in mesoscopic AC-gated semiconductor devices

Abstract

We measure the rectified dc currents resulting when a 3-terminal semiconductor device with gate-dependent conductance is driven with an ac gate voltage. The rectified currents exhibit surprisingly complex behaviour as the dc source-drain bias voltage, the dc gate voltage and the amplitude of the ac gate voltage are varied. We obtain good agreement between our data and a model based on simple assumptions about the stray impedances on the sample chip, over a wide frequency range. This method is applicable to many types of experiment which involve ac gating of a non-linear device, and where an undesireable rectified contribution to the measured signal is present. Finally, we evaluate the small rectified currents flowing in tunable-barrier electron pumps operated in the pinched-off regime. These currents are at most $10^{-12}$ of the pumped current for a pump current of 100 pA. This result is encouraging for the development of tunable-barrier pumps as metrological current standards.

arXiv comment7 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (11)

• Single-shot read-out of an individual electron spin in a quantum dot
• An Adiabatic Quantum Electron Pump
• Towards a quantum representation of the ampere using single electron pumps
• Single-parameter non-adiabatic quantized charge pumping
• Hybrid single-electron transistor as a source of quantized electric current
• Rectification of displacement currents in an adiabatic electron pump
• Photocurrent, Rectification, and Magnetic Field Symmetry of Induced Current Through Quantum Dots
• Robust single-parameter quantized charge pumping
• Accurate high speed single-electron quantum dot preparation
• The quantum metrology triangle and the re-definition of the SI ampere and kilogram; Analysis of a reduced set of observational equations
• Directed electron transport through ballistic quantum dot under microwave radiation

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Non-adiabatic quantized charge pumping with tunable-barrier quantum dots: a review of current progress
• Evidence for universality of tunable-barrier electron pumps
• Transporting and manipulating single electrons in surface-acoustic-wave minima
• Robust operation of a GaAs tunable barrier electron pump
• Precision measurement of an electron pump at 2 GHz
• Gigahertz Single-Electron Pumping Mediated by Parasitic States
• Toward flying qubit spectroscopy
• Lissajous rocking ratchet