Mass enhancement of two-dimensional electrons in thin-oxide Si-MOSFET's

Abstract

We wish to report in this paper a study of the effective mass (m^*) in thin-oxide Si-metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect-transistors, using the temperature dependence of the Shubnikov-de Haas (SdH) effect and following the methodology developed by J.L. Smith and P.J. Stiles, Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 29}, 102 (1972). We find that in the thin oxide limit, when the oxide thickness $d_{ox}$ is smaller than the average two-dimensional electron-electron separation r, m^* is still enhanced and the enhancement can be described by $m^*/m_B = 0.815 + 0.23(r/d_{ox})$, where $m_B = 0.195 m_e$ is the bulk electron mass, $m_e$ the free electron mass. At $n_s = 6 \times 10^{11}/cm^2$, for example, $m^* \simeq 0.25 m_e$, an enhancement doubles that previously reported by Smith and Stiles. Our result shows that the interaction between electrons in the semiconductor and the neutralizing positive charges on the metallic gate electrode is important for mass enhancement. We also studied the magnetic-field orientation dependence of the SdH effect and deduced a value of $3.0 \pm 0.5$ for the effective $g$ factor in our thin oxide samples.