Electronic Transport in Planar Atomic-scale Structures Measured by Two-probe Scanning Tunneling Spectroscopy

Overview

Journal Nat Commun

Specialty Biology

Date 2019 Apr 7

PMID 30952953

Citations 5

Authors

Marek Kolmer

Pedro Brandimarte

Jakub Lis

Rafal Zuzak

Szymon Godlewski

Hiroyo Kawai

Aran Garcia-Lekue

Nicolas Lorente

Thomas Frederiksen

Christian Joachim

Daniel Sanchez-Portal

Marek Szymonski

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Miniaturization of electronic circuits into the single-atom level requires novel approaches to characterize transport properties. Due to its unrivaled precision, scanning probe microscopy is regarded as the method of choice for local characterization of atoms and single molecules supported on surfaces. Here we investigate electronic transport along the anisotropic germanium (001) surface with the use of two-probe scanning tunneling spectroscopy and first-principles transport calculations. We introduce a method for the determination of the transconductance in our two-probe experimental setup and demonstrate how it captures energy-resolved information about electronic transport through the unoccupied surface states. The sequential opening of two transport channels within the quasi-one-dimensional Ge dimer rows in the surface gives rise to two distinct resonances in the transconductance spectroscopic signal, consistent with phase-coherence lengths of up to 50 nm and anisotropic electron propagation. Our work paves the way for the electronic transport characterization of quantum circuits engineered on surfaces.

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