Study of electron charging by voltage pulses in nanopillar transistors at high temperature

A study of electron transport in nanopillar transistors at 300 K shows that elastic vibration is an intrinsic behavior of the device. The frequency observed in the drain-source current is found to agree with that of the charging pulsed voltages. Given a quantum dot of size 10 × 10 × 9 nm3, the maximum displacement is estimated to be 0.3 nm. Once the displacement diminishes to zero, single-electron tunneling becomes the dominant effect. A forced vibration model is proposed to explain the correlation between the surface charges and the vibrations. When the distribution of charges is uniform on each SiNx atom, the vibration becomes stable and can yield a homogenous damping current.