The paper presents two recent progresses in developing single electron devices that can operate at room temperature and one breakthrough in nanopatterning. The first is a single-electron MOS memory in crystalline silicon, that has a channel width (~10 nm) and a nanoscale polysilicon dot (~7 nm by 7 nm) as the floating gate embedded between the channel and a control gate.@footnote 1@ It is observed that storing one electron on the floating gate can significantly screen the channel from the potential on the control gate, leading to a threshold voltage shift. The second progress is a silicon single electron switch, that has a small silicon dot (~12 nm in diameter) inside the channel and separated from the source and drain by two thin tunneling barriers.@footnote 2@ As a gate modulates the electron population inside the dot, the drain current oscillates at room temperature. Each oscillation is attributed to electron tunneling through a discrete single electron level inside the dot. Finally, nanoimprint lithography is a new lithographic mehtod that has achieved sub-10 nm feature size with high throughput and low cost, paving the road for manufacturing silicon single electron devices.@footnote 3@
@FootnoteText@
@footnote 1@L. Guo, E. Leobandung and S.Y. Chou, Science, vol. 275, 649-651, 31 January, 1997.
@footnote 2@L. Zhuang, L. Guo, and S.Y. Chou, IEDM, Dec. 8-10, 1997.
@footnote 3@S.Y. Chou, P.R. Krauss, W. Zhang, L. Guo and L. Zhuang, J. Vac. Sci. Technol. B 15(6), 2897 (1997).