TY - JOUR
T1 - Scanning tunneling microscope observations of the Coulomb blockade
AU - Rong, Z. Y.
AU - Cohen, L. F.
AU - Wolf, E. L.
N1 - Funding Information:
We are grateful to Dr. Said Nourbakhsh for assistance with SEM characterization of the W tips and to Dr. Boris Laikhtman for discussions. This work is supported in part by the U.S. Department of Energy, under Grant DE-FG-02-87ER54301.
PY - 1990/5/28
Y1 - 1990/5/28
N2 - The smooth Coulomb blockade (CB) I-V curve is sometimes observed in cryogenic scanning tunneling microscopy using a voltage biased tip to scan a metal film. Our experiments always give some evidence of the Coulomb staircase, characteristic of two tunnel capacitors in series (STM tip, small particle, and substrate) accompanying the smooth CB I-V curves. We suggest that a small (100 Å) particle occasionally encountered between tip and surface, providing a capacitance of order 10-18 F unaffected by voltage biased leads, is the origin of both effects.
AB - The smooth Coulomb blockade (CB) I-V curve is sometimes observed in cryogenic scanning tunneling microscopy using a voltage biased tip to scan a metal film. Our experiments always give some evidence of the Coulomb staircase, characteristic of two tunnel capacitors in series (STM tip, small particle, and substrate) accompanying the smooth CB I-V curves. We suggest that a small (100 Å) particle occasionally encountered between tip and surface, providing a capacitance of order 10-18 F unaffected by voltage biased leads, is the origin of both effects.
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U2 - 10.1016/0375-9601(90)90981-S
DO - 10.1016/0375-9601(90)90981-S
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0040097277
VL - 146
SP - 281
EP - 285
JO - Physics Letters, Section A: General, Atomic and Solid State Physics
JF - Physics Letters, Section A: General, Atomic and Solid State Physics
SN - 0375-9601
IS - 5
ER -