Observation of room temperature gate tunable quantum confinement effect in photodoped junctionless MOSFET

TL;DR

This study demonstrates a room temperature, gate-tunable quantum confinement effect in a photodoped junctionless MOSFET, showing potential for quantum hardware applications through controlled subband occupation and quantum switching.

Contribution

It introduces a novel gate voltage tunable quantum wire in a junctionless MOSFET and provides a compact model to understand room temperature quantum confinement phenomena.

Findings

Gate-induced switching from semi-classical to quantum domain.

Photodoping causes clear peaks in current at specific gate biases.

Quantum confinement effects persist at room temperature.

Abstract

In the pursuit of room temperature quantum hardware, our study introduces a gate voltage tunable quantum wire within a tri-gated n-type junctionless MOSFET. The application of gate voltage alters the parabolic potential well of the tri-gated junctionless MOSFET, enabling modification of the nanowire's potential well profile. In the presence of light, photogenerated electrons accumulate at the center of the junctionless nanowire, aligning with the modified potential well profile influenced by gate bias. These carriers at the center are far from interfaces and experience less interfacial noise. Therefore, such clean photo-doping shows clear, repeatable peaks in current for specific gate biases compared to the dark condition, considering different operating drain-to-source voltages at room temperature. We propose that photodoping-induced subband occupation of gate tunable potential well of the nanowire is the underlying phenomenon responsible for this kind of observation. This study reveals experimental findings demonstrating gate-induced switching from semi-classical to the quantum domain, followed by the optical occupancy of electronic sub-bands at room temperature. We developed a compact model based on the Nonequilibrium Green's function formalism to understand this phenomenon in our illuminated device better. This work reveals the survival of the quantum confinement effect at room temperature in such semi-classical transport.