Origin of the Peaked Structure in the Conductance of One-Dimensional Silicon Accumulation Layers

Abstract

We have made extensive studies of the temperature, gate voltage, and electric field dependences of the conductance peaks in small silicon inversion layers in order to distinguish between resonant-tunneling models and a hopping model. We find that many of the peaks are consistent only with a hopping model, whereas some could be consistent with an early resonant-tunneling model. None of our structure is consistent with resonant tunneling if the recent formulation of Stone and Lee is correct. © 1985 The American Physical Society.