Silicon Nanoelectronics

The aim of this one week workshop is to bring several distinct but related research directions in Si nanoelectronics together to attack common problems and develop new opportunities that are rapidly becoming accessible in this materials system. The technological progress in Si and SiGe nanoelectronics (bottom-up & top-down) now grants access to single electron quantum processes in this material system, processes that were inaccessible only a few years ago. This experimental progress is paralleled by theoretical work focusing on single electron dynamics in quantum dots and impurities, work that has recently made important but as yet untested predictions. All of these developments point to new opportunities in Si, with the resulting prospect that in coming years the large, world-wide investment in Si fabrication capability may be applied to new and, until recently, unforeseen applications. During the workshop we expect to discuss the following topics:

- Electron spin resonance (ESR) in Si nanostructures is a major focus following recent measurements on high quality bulk samples showed extremely long relaxations times. Key questions include how the environment of nanostructures changes the properties (e.g., the coherence time) of the spin-system.

- Industrial prototype MOSFET devices have evolved up to the level that they are sufficiently small and clean that single dopants dominate their transport properties. This demands an atomistic approach to device physics and opens the way to study a semiconductor on the single dopant level.

- Top-down and bottom-up dopant engineering has evolved to the point that single dopant atoms can be placed with 3D atomic precision. A substantial amount of theoretical work has been done in the context of controlling the orbital as well as spin state of dopant as the basis of a qubit. However, these predictions are largely untested as yet.

- High-quality gates have led to few electron SiGe quantum dots which offer the opportunity to study single electron dynamics and spin coherence problems in a semiconductor host with zero nuclear spin.

- Applied material & device problems of state of the art Si nanodevices are currently merging with the interests of fundamental research and require an atomistic approach to device modeling. On the materials side, new top-down and bottom-up growth concepts like nanowires and ultra-thin membranes of Si and SiGe are emerging as a radical alternative to conventional approaches in both classical and quantum devices for electronic and optical applications.

The research in Si ESR, dopant engineering (top-down and bottom-up), transport through single impurities, Si quantum dots, and materials & devices sketched above is motivated by several different applications, is pursued in a variety of different communities ranging from quantum information science (QIS) to device physics, and is presented at very different conferences or at closed program reviews. However, there exist common problems and opportunities. This workshop will provide a forum for cross-fertilization between the different fields, such that the progress in all these sub-fields can be utilized to solve common scientific problems.