2009/02/28 by Geneviève Fleury, Xavier Waintal · 2 citations
Chemistry · Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Ab initio #Advancements in Semiconductor Devices and Circuit Design #Atomic units #Chemistry #Condensed matter physics #Coulomb #Electron #Field-effect transistor #MOSFET #Materials science #Monte Carlo method #Optoelectronics #Physics #Polarization (electrochemistry) #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #Quantum mechanics #Semiconductor #Semiconductor materials and devices #Silicon #Transistor #Voltage #cond-mat.mes-hall #cond-mat.str-el
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.81.165117
published as Phys. Rev. B 81, 165117 (2010) · two references added, corrected typos, minor changes, final version as published
openalex publication_date 2010/04/29 · arxiv created 2010/07/30 · arxiv updated 2015/05/12 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We show that the unexpected metallic behavior (the so-called two-dimensional metal-insulator transition) observed in low-density silicon metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors is controlled by a unique characteristic energy scale, the polarization energy. On one hand, we perform quantum Monte Carlo calculations of the energy needed to polarize the two-dimensional electron gas at zero temperature, taking into account Coulomb interactions, valley degeneracy, and electronic mobility (disorder). On the other hand, we identify the characteristic energy scale controlling the physics in eight different sets of experiments. We find that our ab initio polarization energies (obtained without any adjustable parameters) are in perfect agreement with the observed characteristic energies for all available data, both for the magnetic field and temperature dependence of the resistivities. Our results put strong constraints on possible mechanisms responsible for the metallic behavior. In particular, there are strong indications that the system would eventually become insulating at low enough temperature.