Artigo Revisado por pares

Charge fluctuations in small-capacitance junctions

1990; American Physical Society; Volume: 64; Issue: 13 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1103/physrevlett.64.1565

ISSN

1092-0145

Autores

A. N. Cleland, John M. Schmidt, John Clarke,

Tópico(s)

Semiconductor materials and devices

Resumo

The current-voltage characteristics of submicron normal-metal tunnel junctions at millikelvin temperatures are observed to exhibit a sharp Coulomb blockade with high-resistance thin-film leads, but to be heavily smeared for low-resistance leads. As the temperature is lowered, the zero-bias differential resistance tends asymptotically to a limit that is greater for junctions with high-resistance leads. Both observations are explained in terms of a model in which quantum fluctuations in the external circuit enhance the low-temperature tunneling rate. The predictions are in reasonable agreement with the data.

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