Control of single electrons using bonor levels in silicon

半导体加工技术的最新进展引起了人们对单电子操纵技术的关注，这种技术利用了限制在微小区域的电子的静电能量。这项技术涉及到所谓的人造原子和人造分子的使用，并且具有非常广泛的应用领域，包括集成电路，传感器，电气标准，激光和量子计算机。我们的目标是建立全新的单电子操纵技术，使用半导体材料的实际原子（真原子）而不是人造原子。我们的相关研究是实现这一目标的第一步，并将供体位点引入硅中作为“真正的原子”。特别是，我们的目标是建立检测单个供体位点和捕获和释放单个供体电子的技术。考虑到在掺杂剂方面已经积累了大量的技术以及其应用的溢出效应，我们希望用硅来进行单供体控制。本研究主要采用磷和硼作为掺杂剂，因为它们在硅中的行为已经研究了很长时间。通过研究包含大量掺杂剂（磷或硼）的大尺寸MOS晶体管在通道中冻结状态下的强电场下的电离现象，我们已经证明了用电场进行电荷控制是可能的。我们还成功地探测到了纳米晶体管中的单个硼原子。这些结果是本研究课题的主要目的，因此可以认为本研究的目的已经达到。

Recent advances in semiconductor processing technology have drawn attention to single-electron manipulation techniques that utilize the electrostatic energy of electrons confined to minute regions. This technology involves the use of so-called artificial atoms and artificial molecules, and has a very wide range of applicable fields including integrated circuits, sensors, electorical standards, lasers and quantum computers. Our goal is to establish completely new single-electron manipulation techniques that use actual atoms of semiconductor material(true atoms) instead of artificial atoms. Our research relating to this submission is the first step towards achieving this goal, and uses donor sites introduced into silicon as "true atoms". In particular, we aim to establish techniques for the detection of individual donor sites and the capture and release of individual donor electrons.Considering the vast amount of technology that has already been accumulated with regard to dopants and the spill-overeffects of their applications, it is desirable that single-donor control is performed using silicon In this study, we mainly employed phosphorus and boron as the dopants because their behavior in silicon has been researched for a long time, By investigating ionization phenomena under a strong electric field from the freeze-out state of a macro-size MOS transistor including large quantities of dopant(phosphorus or boron) in the channel, we have shown that it is possible to perform charge control with an electric field. We have also succeeded in the detection of single boron atoms in a nano-transistor. These results are the principal aim of this research topic, and it can thus be considered that the aims of this study have been achieved.