Effects of impurity scattering on the quantized conductance of a quasi-one-dimensional quantum wire

Abstract

We report an experimental observation of how the presence of an impurity in a quasi-one-dimensional wire influences the quantized conductance. The impurity is a chemically etched nanohole, relative to which the walls of the wire can be tuned via external gate voltages. Depending on the positions of the sidewalls, resonance features are observed in the quantized conductance due to either the multiple scatterings between the impurity and the wall of wire or the channel interference. Meanwhile, the differential conductance exhibits the well-known half-plateau features in a single channel wire or saturates in a wire with coupled two channels.