Charge filling factors in clean and disordered arrays of tunnel junctions

Abstract

We simulate one-dimensional arrays of tunnel junctions using the kinetic Monte Carlo method to study charge filling behaviour in the large charging energy limit. By applying a small fixed voltage bias and varying the offset voltage, we investigate this behaviour in clean and disordered arrays (both weak and strong disorder effects). The offset voltage dependent modulation of the current is highly sensitive to background charge disorder and exhibits substantial variation depending on the strength of the disorder. We show that while small fractional charge filling factors are likely to be washed out in experimental devices due to strong background charge disorder, larger factors may be observable.