Research Article Theoretical Analysis and Characterization of Multi-Islands Single-Electron Devices with Applications

Copyright © 2014 Amine Touati et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. A two- (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) multiple-tunnel junctions array is investigated. Device structure and electrical characteristics are described. We present a comparison of carriers transport through devices based on polymetallic grains based on master equation and the orthodox theory. The Coulomb blockade effect of 2D and 3D arrays is observed at low and high temperatures. The conduction mechanism is handled by the tunnel effect, and we adopt in addition the thermionic and Fowler-Nordheim emissions. Numerical simulation results focused on flash-memory and photodetector applications. Memory characteristics such as program/erase select gate operation are demonstrated in 2D devices. Also 3D array scheme is discussed for the high-density NCs scalable for photodetector application. 1