Research Seminar - March 12, 1999

Abstract

As electronic circuits get progressively smaller and down to the nano meter scale, device analysis based on classical or semi-classical transport theories will eventually fail since the quantum wave nature of the electrons starts to play a dominant role. Very recent advances in semi-conductor fabrication technology have already allowed construction of electronic devices from 500nm to 1nm in size. For example, microprocessor chips with circuit patterns of 200nm have been manufactured. The quantum dots studied at Delft in The Netherlands and NTT in Japan consist of tunnel barriers of only a few nano meters in size. Consequently, electron transport in quantum cavities is receiving great attention worldwide. This talk presents a highly accurate time-dependent model of quantum waveguides with arbitrarily complex geometry. A variety of quantum effects, such as conductance fluctuation and resonant tunneling, will be illustrated and quantified.