Observation of low-dimensional state tunneling in nanocrystalline silicon/crystalline silicon heterostructures

We report on the observation of resonant tunneling phenomena due to the electronic transport through zero- and two-dimensional (0D and 2D) states in n-type nanocrystalline silicon (nc-Si)/p-type crystalline silicon heterostructures. The transport information of both the 0D and 2D carriers has been extracted by the analysis of magnetic-field-dependent Hall data. Clear 2D-0D steplike and 0D-0D spikelike resonant tunneling structures have been demonstrated up to the high temperature of 220 and 50 K in the natural quantum dot system, respectively. The revealed quantum tunneling information should facilitate more practical and more efficient application of nc-Si-based resonant tunneling devices. (C) 2004 American Institute of Physics.