Sulfur passivation of semi-insulating GaAs: Transition from Coulomb blockade to weak localization regime

Journal Article · Fri Apr 15 04:00:00 EDT 2016 · Semiconductors

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1134/S1063782616040060· OSTI ID:22645561

Chaikina, E. I. ^[1]; Danilovskii, E. Yu.; Gets, D. S.; Klyachkin, L. E.; L’vova, T. V.; Malyarenko, A. M. ^[2]

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1. Centro de Investigacion Cientifica y de Educacion Superior de Ensenada, Division de Fisica Aplicada (Mexico)
2. Ioffe Institute (Russian Federation)

The sulfur passivation of the semi-insulating GaAs bulk (SI GaAs) grown in an excess phase of arsenic is used to observe the transition from the Coulomb blockade to the weak localization regime at room temperature. The I–V characteristics of the SI GaAs device reveal nonlinear behavior that appears to be evidence of the Coulomb blockade process as well as the Coulomb oscillations. The sulfur passivation of the SI GaAs device surface results in enormous transformation of the I–V characteristics that demonstrate the strong increase of the resistance and Coulomb blockade regime is replaced by the electron tunneling processes. The results obtained are analyzed within frameworks of disordering SI GaAs surface that is caused by inhomogeneous distribution of the donor and acceptor anti-site defects which affects the conditions of quantum- mechanical tunneling. Weak localization processes caused by the preservation of the Fermi level pinning are demonstrated by measuring the negative magnetoresistance in weak magnetic fields at room temperature. Finally, the studies of the magnetoresistance at higher magnetic fields reveal the h/2e Aharonov–Altshuler–Spivak oscillations with the complicated behavior due to possible statistical mismatch of the interference paths in the presence of different microdefects.

• OSTI ID: 22645561
• Journal Information: Semiconductors, Journal Name: Semiconductors Journal Issue: 4 Vol. 50; ISSN SMICES; ISSN 1063-7826
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE
ARSENIC
COULOMB FIELD
ELECTRONS
FERMI LEVEL
GALLIUM ARSENIDES
INTERFERENCE
MAGNETIC FIELDS
MAGNETORESISTANCE
OSCILLATIONS
PASSIVATION
QUANTUM MECHANICS
SEMICONDUCTOR MATERIALS
SULFUR
TEMPERATURE RANGE 0273-0400 K
TUNNEL EFFECT