Observation of low-dimensional state tunneling in nanocrystalline silicon∕crystalline silicon heterostructures

We report on the observation of resonant tunneling phenomena due to the electronic transport through zero- and two-dimensional (0D and 2D) states in n-type nanocrystalline silicon (nc-Si)∕p-type crystalline silicon heterostructures. The transport information of both the 0D and 2D carriers has been extracted by the analysis of magnetic-field-dependent Hall data. Clear 2D-0D steplike and 0D-0D spikelike resonant tunneling structures have been demonstrated up to the high temperature of 220 and 50K in the natural quantum dot system, respectively. The revealed quantum tunneling information should facilitate more practical and more efficient application of nc-Si-based resonant tunneling devices.