In situ control of electron gas dimensionality in freely suspended semiconductor membranes

Abstract

We present fabrication and measurements of gated suspended low-dimensional electron systems. The core component of the device is a low-dimensional electron gas embedded in a free-standing beam processed from a GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure. The dimensionality of the electronic system is fully controlled by a number of gating electrodes on the suspended membranes. Operation in the quantum Hall regime, in the one-dimensional case, and as zero-dimensional quantum dots is demonstrated. The resulting devices can be applied as ultrasensitive bolometers and as nanoelectromechanical circuits that reach the ultimate limits of displacement detection.