2009/07/28 by L. Bitton, R. Berkovits, Richard Berkovits +4
Computer Science · Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) #Molecular Junctions and Nanostructures #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #Quantum-Dot Cellular Automata #cond-mat.mes-hall
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.0907.4875
5 pages, 4 figures
arxiv created 2009/07/28 · openalex publication_date 2009/07/28 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Systems of quantum dots (QD) connected to leads exhibit periodic conductance peaks as a function of gate voltage arising from the Coulomb blockade effect \citereview1,review2,review3. Much effort goes into minimizing the size of QDs and reaching the scale of single molecules \citemolecular1,molecular2,molecular3 which could serve as nanoelectronic circuit components such as transistors. Connecting molecules or nanoparticles to external leads cannot be achieved by the traditional methods used in semiconductor based QDs, hence, controlling the coupling to nanoparticle QDs is a major technical challenge. Here we present a novel technique by which we can explore electric properties of a metallic nanoparticle while varying the coupling to leads. We find that the conductance through the nanoparticle is characterized by two gate voltage periods. The relative strength of the periods depends both on the dot-lead coupling and on the source-drain voltage. These surprising findings may be a general property of strongly coupled metallic nanoparticles.