Coulomb-blockade effects

Coulomb blockade effects have been observed in a tunnel diode architectme consisting of an aluminum electrode covered by a six-layer LB film of eicosanoic acid, a layer of 3.8-nm CdSe nanoparticles capped with hexanethiol, and a gold electrode [166]. The LB film serves as a tunneling barrier between aluminum and the conduction band of the CdSe particles. The conductance versus applied voltage showed an onset of current flow near 0.7 V. The curve shows some small peaks as the current first rises that were attributed to surface states. The data could be fit using a tunneling model integrated between the bottom of the conduction band of the particles and the Fermi level of the aluminum electrode. 

The temperature dependence of meso PS resistivity can be understood if Coulomb blockade effects are taken into account. For a silicon nanocrystallite to become conducting, it must first overcome the Coulomb blockade barrier, EB [Lel4, Hal4, Mi8] ... 

The interpretation of these different experimental observations is complicated by the fact that for micro PS, not only do the Coulomb blockade effects have to be... 

The device consists of a Ceo molecule fixed in the middle of two atomic scale gold leads, and the C2 symmetry axis of the molecule coincides with the horizontal axis (2-axis), see Fig. 1. Two distances between the electrodes are considered, 11.7 A and 13.7 A. They correspond to the minimum distance between an Au atom of the left (right) lead and a C atom of the Ceo at 2.3 A and 3.3 A, respectively. Each electrode consists of repeated unit cells with nine Au atoms in the (100) direction and extended to 2 = 00. We do not consider the Coulomb blockade effect because the C60 is strongly coupled to the electrodes at these small electrode separations. 

This necessary condition corresponds to the onset of shuttling and has been found in Ref. [Fedorets 2002], For ttCl, however, Eq. 30 can be utilized only at the beginning of the instability, because in this approximation the charge is independent of Uc, which does not account for the Coulomb blockade effect. 

The Coulomb blockade effect was originally observed in experiments on small metallic or superconducting particles [138-141], in which nanometer-sized metallic grains were embedded within a metal oxide-metal tunnel junction. Electronic measurements performed on these systems at low temperatures (T 1 K) revealed an anomalous behavior of the resistance (or differential capacitance) at zero bias. It was realized that this behavior was caused by the extremely small capacitance of the metallic particles. In a simple model, a spherical particle of diameter d embedded in a... 

Many years after the initial experiments, the Coulomb blockade effect was observed for the first time in a Uthographically defined metalUc structure [142]. In contrast to the earlier experiments, the effect could now be observed for a single metallic island rather than averaged over a large population of nanopartides. Shortly afterwards. Coulomb blockade was also observed in a semiconductor microstructure [143]. The use of Uthographic techniques facilitates the realization of well-defined three-terminal geometries. In such a geometry, in addition to the source and... 

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