Tunneling spectroscopy of electron-in-a-box states in metal nanoparticles as a function of the number of electrons
Abstract
If the island of a metallic single-electron transistor is sufficiently small, the discrete spectrum of "electron in a box" states in the island can be resolved by tunneling spectroscopy at low temperature. We report studies of such spectra from devices made by a new fabrication technique that allows the number of electrons in a metal nanoparticle to be tuned by more than 10 while measuring its discrete energy levels. Except for the effects of level filling, we find that the excited-state spectra in gold nanoparticles changes very little as electrons are added, in contrast to previous studies in GaAs quantum dots. We conclude that exchange interactions are sufficiently weak in gold that the (spin-degenerate) energy levels are filled as in a non-interacting model. In several gold samples, we also find larger g-factors for Zeeman splitting than were measured in a previous device geometry.
- Publication:
-
APS March Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- March 2004
- Bibcode:
- 2004APS..MARY37013K