Stability of single electron devices: Charge offset drift

Abstract

Single electron devices (SEDs) afford the opportunity to isolate and manipulate individual electrons. This ability imbues SEDs with potential applications in a wide array of areas from metrology (current and capacitance) to quantum information. Success in each application ultimately requires exceptional performance, uniformity, and stability from SEDs which is currently unavailable. In this review, we discuss a time instability of SEDs that occurs at low frequency (≪ 1 Hz) called charge offset drift. We review experimental work which shows that charge offset drift is large in metal-based SEDs and absent in Si-SiO2-based devices. We discuss the experimental results in the context of glassy relaxation as well as prospects of SED device applications.