Field effect two-dimensional electron gases in modulation-doped InSb surface quantum wells

TL;DR

This study investigates the transport properties of field effect 2DEGs in surface InSb quantum wells, demonstrating high mobility, tunable electron density, and strong spin-orbit coupling, with implications for quantum device applications.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of the transport characteristics and material properties of modulation-doped InSb quantum wells, highlighting the effects of doping and heterostructure design on 2DEG performance.

Findings

High mobility exceeding 24,000 cm^2/Vs

Gate-tunable and stable electron density up to 4×10^{11} cm^{-2}

Large Rashba spin-orbit coefficients up to 110 meV·Å

Abstract

We report on transport characteristics of field effect two-dimensional electron gases (2DEG) in surface indium antimonide quantum wells. The topmost 5 nm of the 30 nm wide quantum well is doped and shown to promote the formation of reliable, low resistance Ohmic contacts to surface InSb 2DEGs. High quality single-subband magnetotransport with clear quantized integer quantum Hall plateaus are observed to filling factor $\nu=1$ in magnetic fields of up to $B=18$ T. We show that the electron density is gate-tunable, reproducible, and stable from pinch-off to 4$\times 10^{11}$ cm$^{-2}$, and peak mobilities exceed 24,000 cm$^2$/Vs. Large Rashba spin-orbit coefficients up to 110 meV$\cdot$\r{A} are obtained through weak anti-localization measurements. An effective mass of 0.019$m_e$ is determined from temperature-dependent magnetoresistance measurements, and a g-factor of 41 at a density of 3.6$\times 10^{11}$ cm$^{-2}$ is obtained from coincidence measurements in tilted magnetic fields. By comparing two heterostructures with and without a delta-doped layer beneath the quantum well, we find that the carrier density is stable with time when doping in the ternary Al$_{0.1}$In$_{0.9}$Sb barrier is not present. Finally, the effect of modulation doping on structural asymmetry between the two heterostructures is characterized.