Abstract

Recently, single-electron charging effects in ultrasmall tunnel junctions have attracted considerable interest.¹ When the capacitance of such a junction is sufficiently small that the single-electron charging energy (e²/2C) exceeds the characteristic energy ↪f the thermal fluctuations (kI), the electron tunneling events are correlated. in particular, it has been shown experimentally that these Coulomb-blockade-induced correlations in constant-voltage-driven two-junction systems result in a periodic modulation of the current-voltage characteristics.²

© 1993 Optical Society of America