The critical role of substrate disorder in valley splitting in Si quantum wells

Neyens, Samuel F.; Foote, Ryan H.; Thorgrimsson, Brandur; Knapp, T. J.; McJunkin, Thomas; Vandersypen, L. M. K.; Amin, Payam; Thomas, Nicole K.; Clarke, James S.; Savage, D. E.; Lagally, M. G.; Friesen, Mark; Coppersmith, S. N.; Eriksson, M. A.

doi:10.1063/1.5033447

The critical role of substrate disorder in valley splitting in Si quantum wells

Journal Article · Mon Jun 11 00:00:00 EDT 2018 · Applied Physics Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5033447· OSTI ID:1460093

Neyens, Samuel F. ^[1]; ^[2]; Thorgrimsson, Brandur ^[3]; Knapp, T. J. ^[2]; McJunkin, Thomas ^[2]; ^[4]; Amin, Payam ^[5]; Thomas, Nicole K. ^[5]; Clarke, James S. ^[5]; Savage, D. E. ^[2]; Lagally, M. G. ^[2]; ^[2]; Coppersmith, S. N. ^[2]; Eriksson, M. A. ^[2]

Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI (United States); Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI (United States)
University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA
Delft Univ. of Technology, Delft (The Netherlands)
Intel Corp., Hillsboro, OR (United States)

Atomic-scale disorder at the top interface of a Si quantum well is known to suppress the valley splitting. Such disorder may be inherited from the underlying substrate and relaxed buffer growth, but can also arise at the top quantum well interface due to the random SiGe alloy. Here, we perform activation energy (transport) measurements in the quantum Hall regime to determine the source of the disorder affecting the valley splitting. We consider three Si/SiGe heterostructures with nominally identical substrates but different barriers at the top of the quantum well, including two samples with pure-Ge interfaces. For all three samples, we observe a surprisingly strong and universal dependence of the valley splitting on the electron density (E_v ~ n^2.7) over the entire experimental range (E_v = 30-200 µeV). In conclusion, we interpret these results via tight binding theory, arguing that the underlying valley physics is determined mainly by disorder arising from the substrate and relaxed buffer growth.

View Accepted Manuscript (DOE)

Research Organization:: Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES) (SC-22)

Grant/Contract Number:: FG02-03ER46028

OSTI ID:: 1460093

Alternate ID(s):: OSTI ID: 1454355

Journal Information:: Applied Physics Letters, Journal Name: Applied Physics Letters Journal Issue: 24 Vol. 112; ISSN 0003-6951

Publisher:: American Institute of Physics (AIP)Copyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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