Electron tunneling from the edge of thin single-crystal Si layers through SiO2 film

Silicon/edge-oxide/polysilicon tunnel devices using a very thin silicon-on-insulator film as a cathode were fabricated to study the electron tunneling properties of nanometer-scale silicon. To this end, the tunneling current from the edge of the 5-nm-thick SIMOX-silicon layers was measured in terms of the polysilicon front gate bias. The results indicated that a positive bias at the front induces the current-gate voltages characteristics to exhibit a steplike behavior.