title: Study of single silicon quantum dots' band gap and single-electron charging energies by room temperature scanning tunneling microscopy.
abstract: Scanning tunneling spectroscopy in the shell-filling regime was carried out at room temperature to investigate the size dependence of the band gap and single-electron charging energy of single Si quantum dots (QDs). The results are compared with model calculation. A 12-fold multiple staircase structure was observed for a QD of about 4.3 nm diameter, reflecting the degeneracy of the first energy level, as expected from theoretical calculations. The systematic broadening of the tunneling spectroscopy peaks with decreasing dot diameter is attributed to the reduced barrier height for smaller dot sizes and to the splitting of the first energy level.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical Engineering, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel.
authors.forename: Bashir
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Zaknoon
authors.forename: Gad
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Bahir
authors.forename: Cecile
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Saguy
authors.forename: Rachel
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Edrei
authors.forename: Alon
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Hoffman
authors.forename: Rajesh A
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Rao
authors.forename: Ramachandran
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Muralidhar
authors.forename: Ko-Min
authors.initials: KM
authors.lastname: Chang
mesh_terms: D004579:Electron Transport; D004583:Electrons; D008422:Materials Testing; D016252:Microscopy, Scanning Tunneling / Q000379:methods*; D010316:Particle Size; D045663:Quantum Dots; D012825:Silicon / Q000737:chemistry*; D013696:Temperature
chemical_list: D012825:Silicon