Accurate characterization of tip-induced potential using electron interferometry

Abstract

Using the tip of a scanning probe microscope as a local electrostatic gate gives access to real-space information on electrostatics as well as charge transport at the nanoscale, provided that the tip-induced electrostatic potential is well known. Here, we focus on the accurate characterization of the tip potential, in a regime where the tip locally depletes a two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) hosted in a semiconductor heterostructure. Scanning the tip in the vicinity of a quantum point contact defined in the 2DEG, we observe Fabry–Pérot interference fringes at low temperature in maps of the device conductance. We exploit the evolution of these fringes with the tip voltage to measure the change in the depletion radius by electron interferometry. We find that a semi-classical finite-element self-consistent model taking into account the conical shape of the tip reaches a faithful correspondence with the experimental data.