2009/04/17 by Morewell Gasseller, M. Gasseller, R. Loo +15
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Molecular Junctions and Nanostructures #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #Semiconductor materials and devices #cond-mat.mes-hall #cond-mat.mtrl-sci
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.0904.2617
17 pages (main text is 5 pages), 3 figures and 4 supplementary figures
arxiv created 2009/12/07 · arxiv updated 2009/12/08
Motivated by recent transport experiments and proposed atomic-scale semiconductor devices, we present measurements that extend the reach of scanned-probe methods to discern the properties of individual dopants tens of nanometers below the surface of a silicon sample. Using a capacitance-based approach, we have both spatially-resolved individual subsurface boron acceptors and detected spectroscopically single holes entering and leaving these minute systems of atoms. A resonance identified as the B+ state is shown to shift in energy from acceptor to acceptor. We examine this behavior with respect to nearest-neighbor distances. By directly measuring the quantum levels and testing the effect of dopant-dopant interactions, this method represents a valuable tool for the development of future atomic-scale semiconductor devices.