Memory and Coulomb blockade effects in germanium nanocrystals embedded in amorphous silicon on silicon dioxide

Germanium nanocrystals embedded in amorphous silicon and self-organized on a tunnel silicon dioxide layer thermally grown on (100) p-doped silicon substrate have been electrically studied at different temperatures by using current-voltage and capacitance-voltage measurements. Results showed a carrier exchange between the gate and isolated germanium nanocrystals via amorphous silicon. Hysteresis loops observed in the capacitance-voltage curves were attributed to electron injection/emission process in germanium nanocrystals, which indicated a memory effect behavior. Resonant tunneling effect through germanium nanocrystals with large voltage gaps was observed at room temperature in these ultradense Ge nanocrystals of similar to 3.5 nm mean size. It appeared for increasingly low voltages when the temperature decreases. All these results are consistent with a Coulomb blockade effect in ultrasmall Ge nanocrystals in which an effective number of electrons transported by each tunneling step varied between 1.8 and 3.81. (C) 2007 American Institute of Physics.