Coulomb blockade in silicon nanostructures

Today single-electron devices are believed to be among the top candidates to replace standard complementary metal oxide silicon field effect transistor technology at the end of the conventional semiconductor roadmap. In this review, we present a brief survey of different realizations of single-electron devices fabricated in silicon-on-insulator (SOI) films. Using a silicon-based fabrication technology allows the further utilisation of the manufacturing processes already established in semiconductor industry. Moreover, the use of SOI allows for the lithographic definition of the currently smallest structure sizes, which are crucial for the room temperature operation of single-electron devices. We start our review with a simple introduction into the physical concepts of single-electron tunneling, followed by a description of the nanolithographic preparation techniques which are used to define room temperature single-electron devices. Then, we present our latest measurements on the different types of single-electron devices treated in this review. As an outlook, we finally show first results on freely suspended single-electron devices. Since dissipation can be highly suppressed in these novel devices, they might be especially suited for future applications in single electronics. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.