Features of conduction mechanisms in Si/oligo-β-naphthol/metal heterostructures

Photoassisted Fowler-Nordheim-like tunneling from passivated GaAs microcantilevers

“…While the relevant processes for electron transport in reverse-biased metal-insulator-structures have been identified as standard tunneling, Fowler-Nordheim (FN) tunneling 1,2 or hopping between defects in the insulator, 3 there are at least three types of systems for which a better understanding of this transport is the subject of active research: (i) tunneling between metals through polymer or organic layers, 4,5 both for fundamental investigations of molecular energy levels and for applications exploiting light emission from organic compounds (calculations and experiments reveal FN-like behavior governed by the localized energy levels of the polymer), 6 (ii) charge and spin injection in hybrid semiconductormagnetic metal devices in the dark 7 or under light excitation, 8 and (iii) spin-polarized electron tunneling from optically pumped GaAs using a tunnel gap of adjustable width. 9,10 In this work the tunneling mechanism for photoelectron transport from a GaAs microcantilever through a polymer and into a gold surface is investigated.…”