Transformation of a metal-insulator-silicon structure into a resonant-tunneling diode

A metal-oxide-semiconductor diode, with two tunnel-transparent barriers due to heavily doped silicon and nanometer-thin insulator, has been shown to exhibit steps or peaks in the static current-voltage curves. For the positive gate bias, appearance of these features in both simulations and measurements testifies to resonant tunneling of electrons from the silicon valence band via the discrete levels of the near-interface quantum well into the metal in the regime of deep depletion in silicon space charge region. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.