The motion of individual cells in the body or the transport
of charge carriers in energy storage systems can be understood only in the context of the particular environment.
We realised that this would allow the microscopic control over the
distribution of charged carriers in a bulk semiconductor (e.g. traditional Si microchips) in a nonlinear manner.
However, observing size
quantization of charge carriers in graphene nanoconstrictions has, until now, proved elusive due to the high sensitivity of the electron wave to disorder.
Mikhail Katsnelson, a physicist at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands who did not contribute to the new research, has hypothesized that graphene's ripples are one possible source for
scattering of charge carriers in the material.
By choosing a suitable metal and applying an electric field, the
concentration of charge carriers in graphene and thus the conduction through the graphene can be influenced.
In particular, his model also explains why a thin, electrically insulating layer between the two materials can even facilitate the
transition of charge carriers.
«I calculated the
impact of the charge carrier distribution on the electronic states at the interface and how these changes feed back onto the charge carrier distribution,» he explains.
In effect, these quantum wells (where electrons and «holes» both see a lower energy in the «well» layer, hence the name) use their special properties for the
confinement of charge carriers (the electrons and holes) in thin layers at a quantum level.
In a recent joint experimental and theoretical work, an international group of physicists demonstrated size
quantization of charge carriers, i.e. quantized conductance in nanoscale samples of graphene.
Understanding the doubling
of charge carriers in a material may help researchers to better explain and engineer reverse processes, too — such as the technology used in some mobile phone displays that reduces the number of charge carriers (a process known as triplet fusion), said Neaton.