A novel planar back-gate design to control the carrier concentrations in GaAs-based double quantum wells

Abstract

The precise control of a bilayer system consisting of two adjacent two-dimensional electron gases (2DEG) is demonstrated by using a novel planar back-gate approach based on ion implantation. This technique overcomes some common problems of the traditional design like the poor 2DEG mobility and leakage currents between the gate and the quantum well. Both bilayers with and without separate contacts have been prepared and tested. Tuning the electron density in one layer while keeping the second 2DEG at fixed density, one observes a dramatic increase of the carrier concentration. This tunneling resonance, which occurs at equal densities of both layers, demonstrates the separated contacts to each individual layer. In another sample with a smaller tunneling barrier and parallel contacted 2DEGs, the transition from a single 2DEG to a bilayer system is investigated at 50 mK in magnetic fields up to 12 T, showing the gate stability in high magnetic fields and very low temperatures. Transitions into an insulating (Wigner crystal) phase are observed in the individual layers in high fields at filling factors below 1/3. The absence of a fractional quantum Hall liquid at filling factor 1/5 in our structure seems to be a consequence of confining the electrons in quantum wells rather than at interfaces. The observed metal-insulator transitions appear to be nearly unaffected by the presence of the second layer separated by a barrier which is only 3 nm thick. We believe that this planar back-gate design holds great promise to produce controllable bilayers suitable to investigate the exotic (non-abelian) properties of correlated states.