Evidence of coulomb blockade induced alternating current in nanopillar transistor

Study of electron transport in nanopillar transistor at 300K shows that elastic vibration is an intrinsic behavior of the device. The frequency observed in the drain-source current is found to agree with the charging frequency. Given a quantum dot of size 10×10×9nm
³
, the maximum displacement is estimated to be 0.3nm. Once the displacement diminishes to zero, single-electron tunnel becomes the dominating effect. A forced vibration model is proposed to explain the correlation between surface charges and vibrations. When the distribution of charges is uniformly on each SiNx atom, vibration becomes stable and can yield homogenous damping current.