Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Letter
  • Published:

Resonant tunnelling and fast switching in amorphous-carbon quantum-well structures

Nature Materials volume 5, pages 19–22 (2006)Cite this article

Abstract

The need for fast electronic devices working under extreme conditions, particularly at high temperature and high voltage, led researchers to investigate the use of films based on diamond1,2,3, graphitic carbon4, amorphous carbon 5 and other carbon nanostructures6. In parallel, a different class of materials including disordered organic7,8 and inorganic9,10,11 materials has been studied, particularly for fast switching and large-area inexpensive electronics based on quantum transport9,12. However, fast-switching devices of amorphous semiconductors based on negative differential resistance or resonant tunnelling has not been achieved so far13,14. Here, we show negative differential resistance peaks, quantized conductance and bias-induced switching with a high-frequency response from amorphous-carbon quantum-well structures. We also demonstrate sufficiently large values for the phase-coherence length and delocalized conduction in these band-modulated low-dimensional disordered carbon structures, which could lead to a new generation of unusual fast-switching devices.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Nonlinearity in I–V curves can be seen at 300 K from carbon DB-RTD devices having (s p3C, 2.8 eV bandgap) barriers of 4 nm width and a well 1–4 nm thick (s p2C, 1.5 eV bandgap).
Figure 2: The NDR feature is seen in the devices at 77 K having different well widths.
Figure 3: Periodic steps of resistance (between 1/2 and 1/7) can be seen with equal steps of the bias voltage.
Figure 4: Variation of capacitance (red and black symbols) and reflected power gain (green and blue symbols) with frequency (50–110 GHz) at low and high bias (6.3 V).

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Isberg, J. et al. High carrier mobility in single-crystal plasma-deposited diamond. Science 297, 1670–1672 (2002).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Geis, M. W., Efremow, N. M. & Rathman, D. D. Summary abstract: device applications of diamonds. J. Vac. Sci. Technol. A 6, 1953–1954 (1988).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Amaratunga, G. A. J. A dawn for carbon electronics? Science 297, 1657–1658 (2002).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Novoselov, K. S. et al. Electric field effect in atomically thin carbon films. Science 306, 666–669 (2004).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Silva, S. R. P., Carey, J. D., Khan, R. U. A., Gerstner, E. G. & Anguita, J. V. in Handbook of Thin Film Materials (ed. Nalwa, H. S.) 403–506 (Academic, New York, 2002).

    Google Scholar 

  6. Mason, N., Biercuk, M. J. & Marcus, C. M. Local gate control of a carbon nanotube double quantum dot. Science 303, 655–658 (2004).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Lindoy, L. F. Optoelectronics: Marvels of molecular device. Nature 364, 17–18 (1993).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Burroughes, J. H., Jones, C. A. & Friend, R. H. New semiconductor device physics in polymer diodes and transistors. Nature 335, 137–141 (1988).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Silva, S. R. P., Amaratunga, G. A.J., Woodburn, C. N., Welland, M. E. & Haq, S. Quantum size effects in amorphous diamond-like carbon superlattices. Jpn J. Appl. Phys. 33, 6458–6465 (1994).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Brown, E. R., Goodhue, W. D. & Sollner, T. C. L. G. Fundamental oscillations up to 200 GHz in resonant tunneling diodes and new estimates of their maximum oscillation frequency from stationary-state tunneling theory. J. Appl. Phys. 64, 1519–1529 (1988).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Zhao, Y.-P. et al. Frequency-dependent electrical transport in carbon nanotubes. Phys. Rev. B 64, 201402 (2001).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Chen, J., Reed, M. A., Rawlett, A. M. & Tour, J. M. Large on-off ratios and negative differential resistance in a molecular electronic device. Science 286, 1550–1552 (1999).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. He, Y. L. et al. Conduction mechanism of hydrogenated nanocrystalline silicon films. Phys. Rev. B 59, 15352–15357 (1999).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Miyazaki, S., Ihara, Y. & Hirose, M. Resonant tunneling through amorphous silicon–silicon nitride double-barrier structures. Phys. Rev. Lett. 59, 125–127 (1987).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Shannon, J. M. & Nieuwesteeg, K. J. B. M. Tunneling effective mass in hydrogenated amorphous silicon. Appl. Phys. Lett. 62, 1815–1817 (1993).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Datta, S. Electronic Transport in Mesoscopic System (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1995).

    Book  Google Scholar 

  17. Kelly, M. J. Low Dimensional Semiconductors (Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, 1995).

    Google Scholar 

  18. Hajto, J. et al. Quantized electron transport in amorphous-silicon memory structures. Phys. Rev. Lett. 66, 1918–1921 (1991).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Gerstner, E. G. & McKenzie, D. R. Nonvolatile memory effects in nitrogen doped tetrahedral amorphous carbon films. J. Appl. Phys. 84, 5647–5651 (1998).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Davis, C. A. et al. Direct observation of compositionally homogeneous a-C:H band gap modulated superlattices. Phys. Rev. Lett. 75, 4258–4261 (1995).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Dashiell, M. W., Kolodzey, J., Crozat, P., Aniel, F. & Lourtioz, J.-M. Microwave properties of silicon junction tunnel diodes grown by molecular beam epitaxy. IEEE Electron Dev. Lett. 23, 357–360 (2002).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the EPSRC for financial support under the Carbon Based Electronics and Portfolio Partnership Programmes and members of the Nano-Electronics Centre. The authors are thankful to J. M. Shannon for valuable discussions and I. Robertson for use of the microwave facility. E.M. acknowledges the Generalitat de Catalunya for the Nanotec postdoctoral fellowship.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nanoelectronics Centre, Advanced Technology Institute, University of Surrey, Guildford, GU2 7XH, UK

    S. Bhattacharyya, S. J. Henley, E. Mendoza, L. Gomez-Rojas, J. Allam & S. R. P. Silva

Authors
  1. S. Bhattacharyya
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. S. J. Henley
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. E. Mendoza
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. L. Gomez-Rojas
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. J. Allam
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. S. R. P. Silva
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to S. R. P. Silva.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Bhattacharyya, S., Henley, S., Mendoza, E. et al. Resonant tunnelling and fast switching in amorphous-carbon quantum-well structures. Nature Mater 5, 19–22 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat1551

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat1551

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing