Continuous phase transitions in high-mobility Si MOSFETs at finite temperatures

•Metal Insulator Transition in 2D Si-MOSFETs.•Our results show the existence of two phases independent of temperatures.•The metal–insulator transition phenomenon observed in Si-MOSFETs persists at finite temperatures.•The metal–insulator transition phenomenon observed in Si-MOSFETs is essentially a phase transition at zero temperature.

We re-analyze earlier published data on two dimensional electron system Si-MOSFETs sample, in which a transition from metallic to insulator (MIT) behavior was observed. Our results indicate the existence of continuous phase transition at finite temperatures. We have focused our work around the critical density nc of the MIT, where nc ≈ 0.712 × 1011 cm−2, and we have found that the two suggestive phase transitions revealed in previous work, persist at finite temperatures by plotting log10ρ and d log10σ/dns against carrier density ns. However, the graphics displaying log10ρ (ns) and d log10σ/dns (ns  ) share a peak located almost at the same value of the carrier density ns∗≈1×1011cm-2 remarkably higher than the critical density nc in contrast to earlier work, where this peak is located just at nc.