Characterization of aluminum oxide tunnel barriers by combining transport measurements and transmission electron microscopy imaging

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© 2014 American Institute of Physics. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the American Institute of Physics. The following article appeared in Journal of Applied Physics, Volume 116, Issue 7 and may be found at http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/jap/116/7/10.1063/1.4893473
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Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

School of Science | A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä

Date

2014

Major/Subject

Mcode

Degree programme

Language

en

Pages

073702/1-4

Series

Journal of Applied Physics, Volume 116, Issue 7

Abstract

We present two approaches for studying the uniformity of a tunnel barrier. The first approach is based on measuring single-electron and two-electron tunneling in a hybrid single-electron transistor. Our measurements indicate that the effective area of a conduction channel is about one order of magnitude larger than predicted by theoretical calculations. With the second method, transmission electron microscopy, we demonstrate that variations in the barrier thickness are a plausible explanation for the larger effective area and an enhancement of higher order tunneling processes.

Description

Keywords

transmission electron microscopy, tunneling, aluminium, copper, tunnel junctions, SET, TEM

Other note

Citation

Aref, T. & Averin, A. & van Dijken, S. & Ferring, A. & Koberidze, M. & Maisi, V. F. & Nguyend, H. Q. & Nieminen, R. M. & Pekola, Jukka & Yao, L. D. 2014. Characterization of aluminum oxide tunnel barriers by combining transport measurements and transmission electron microscopy imaging. Journal of Applied Physics. Volume 116, Issue 7. 073702/1-4. ISSN 0021-8979 (printed). DOI: 10.1063/1.4893473.