Thesis presented January 20, 2017

Abstract:
In the recent years, silicon has emerged as a promising host material for spin qubits. Thanks to its widespread use in modern microelectronics, silicon technology has seen a tremendous development. Realizing qubit devices using well-established complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) fabrication technology would clearly favor their large scale integration. In this thesis we present a detailed study on CMOS devices in a perspective of qubit operability. In particular we tackled the problems of charge and spin confinement in quantum dots, spin manipulation and charge and spin readout .We explored the different charge and spin confinement capabilities of samples with different sizes and geometries. Ultrascaled MOSFETs show Coulomb blockade up to room temperature with charging energies up to 200meV. Multigate devices with larger geometrical dimensions have been used to confine spins and read their states through spin-blockade as a way to perform spin to charge conversion. Spin manipulation is achieved by means of Electron Dipole induced Spin Resonance (EDSR). The two lowest valleys of silicon's conduction band originate as intra and inter-valley spin transitions; we probe a valley splitting of 36μeV. The origin of this spin resonance is explained as an effect of the specific geometry of the sample combined with valley physics and Rashba spin-orbit interaction. Signatures of coherent Rabi oscillations have been measured, with a Rabi frequency of 6MHz. We also discuss fast charge and spin readout performed by dispersive gate-coupled reflectometry. We show how to use it to recover the complete charge stability diagram of the device and the expected signal for an isolated double dot system. Finite bias changes the response of the system and we used it to probe excited states and their dynamics.

Keywords:
Nanophysics, Field effect transistor, Spin resonance, Quantum dots, Silicon

On-line thesis.