Coulomb gap and variable range hopping in a pinned Wigner crystal

Abstract

It is shown that pinning of an electron Wigner crystal by a small concentration of charged impurities creates the finite density of charged localized states near the Fermi level. In the case of residual impurities in the spacer this density of states is related to nonlinear screening of a close acceptor by a Wigner crystal vacancy. On the other hand, intentional doping by a remote layer of donors is a source of a long range potential, which generates dislocations in Wigner crystal. Dislocations in turn create charged localized states near the Fermi level. In both cases Coulomb interaction of localized states leads to the soft Coulomb gap and ES variable range hopping at low enough temperatures.

To be published in proceedings of 10th conference on hopping and related phenomena in Physica Status Solidi

References in corpus (4)

• The Ground State of a Two-Dimensional Electron Liquid in a Weak Magnetic Field
• Two - Dimensional Electron Liquid in a Weak Magnetic Field
• Topological Defects, Orientational Order, and Depinning of the Electron Solid in a Random Potential
• Non-monotonic magnetic field and density dependence of in-plane magnetoresistance in dilute two-dimensional holes in GaAs/AlGaAs

Cited by in corpus (5)

• One-dimensional transport in polymer nanofibers
• Competing correlated states around the zero field Wigner crystallization transition of electrons in two-dimensions
• Zero field Wigner crystal
• Disorder and electron interaction control in low-doped silicon metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistors
• Variation of the hopping exponent in disordered silicon MOSFETs