Charging dynamics of a floating gate transistor with site-controlled quantum dots

A quantum dot memory based on a GaAs/AlGaAs quantum wire with site-controlled InAs quantum dots was realized by means of molecular beam epitaxy and etching techniques. By sampling of different gate voltage sweeps for the determination of charging and discharging thresholds, it was found that discharging takes place at short time scales of μs, whereas several seconds of waiting times within a distinct negative gate voltage range were needed to charge the quantum dots. Such quantum dot structures have thus the potential to implement logic functions comprising charge and time dependent ingredients such as counting of signals or learning rules.