Journal of the Physical Society of Japan
Pauli Spin Blockade and Influence of Hyperfine Interaction in Vertical Quantum Dot Molecule with Six-Electrons
S. Amaha, Tetsuo Kodera, T. Hatano, Keiji Ono, 康弘 都倉, Seigo Tarucha, James A. Gupta, D. G. Austing
Abstract
We investigate Pauli spin blockade and the influence of hyperfine interaction for a system of six-electrons in a device composed of two weakly coupled vertical quantum dots. As a consequence of a large built-in offset energy between the dots, the relevant charge configurations consist of one (zero) and five (six) electrons on the upstream dot and downstream dot respectively. On sweeping the out-of-dot-plane magnetic field up and down, abrupt steps and hysteresis in the leakage current are observed in the Pauli spin blockade region that evolve systematically with bias. We propose a model to explain our observations in terms of hyperfine induced singlet-triplet mixing. © 2011 The Physical Society of Japan.