Quantum transport in semiconductor surface and interface channels

Abstract

Advanced silicon technology developed in the early sixties brought us a two-dimensional electron system in silicon inversion layers adjacent to silicon dioxides in metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect-transistors. In the early eighties the advancement of molecular-beam-epitaxy brought us another two-dimensional electron system in gallium arsenide inversion layers adjacent to gallium aluminum arsenide. Thus semiconductor surface and interface channels have provided us outstanding stages on which two-dimensional electron systems played the leading role in the progress of quantum transport where the quantum mechanical properties of the conduction electrons influence the transport processes. This article describes the progress in the understanding of the quantum transport over the last thirty years from the birth of the two-dimensional system till the present in as far as the author was concerned with.