Publications

National High Magnetic Field Laboratory 2016 Annual Research Report: Termination of Two-Dimensional Metallic Conduction near the Metal-Insulator Transition in Si/SiGe Quantum Wells

Pan, Wei P.; Lu, Tzu-Ming L.; Xia, J.S.; Sullivan, N.S.; Huang, S.-H.H.; Chuang, Y.C.; Li, J.-Y.L.; Liu, C.W.; Tsui, D.C.

The physical properties of two-dimensional (2D) electrons have been a subject of interest for a long time. Yet after many years of research, the ground states of a 2D electron system (2DES) in the presence of disorder and electron-electron interaction, a realistic situation in experiments, remain an open question. Recent observations of a downturn in conductivity at low temperatures in a Si/SiGe quantum well [1], Si-MOSFETs [2,3], and 2D holes in GaAs [4-6] seem to suggest that disorder plays an important role in the so-called 2D metal-insulator transition (MIT) and at T → 0 2DES may eventually become insulating. In this experiment, we focus on the downturn behavior as a function of spin polarization, which is varied by an in-plane magnetic field.