Avalanche amplification of multiple resonant tunneling through parallel silicon microcrystallites

Abstract

Current-voltage measurements of resonant tunneling through nanoscale silicon particles reveal large current staircases. These current jumps are sharper than what would be expected considering feature smearing due to a distribution of particle sizes and are surprisingly large (fivefold increase in current). This situation is now understood. The sharpness of the current jumps comes from the action of tunneling through a few groups of particles of different sizes connected in parallel, and the magnitude of the current jumps results from substrate avalanche multiplication of the small injected resonant-tunneling current.