Scanning-Gate Microscopy of Semiconductor Nanostructures: An Overview

F. Martinsa, B. Hackensa, H. Sellierb, P. Liub, M.G. Palac, S. Baltazarc, L. Desplanqued, X. Wallartd, V. Bayota, b and S. Huantb aIMCN, pôle NAPS, Université Catholique de Louvain, B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium bInstitut Néel, CNRS & Université Joseph Fourier, BP 166, F-38042 Grenoble, France cIMEP-LAHC, UMR 5130, CNRS/INPG/UJF/UdS, Minatec, Grenoble, France dIEMN, Cité Scientifique, Villeneuve d'Ascq, France

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This paper presents an overview of scanning-gate microscopy applied to the imaging of electron transport through buried semiconductor nanostructures. After a brief description of the technique and of its possible artifacts, we give a summary of some of its most instructive achievements found in the literature and we present an updated review of our own research. It focuses on the imaging of GaInAs-based quantum rings both in the low magnetic field Aharonov-Bohm regime and in the high-field quantum Hall regime. In all of the given examples, we emphasize how a local-probe approach is able to shed new, or complementary, light on transport phenomena which are usually studied by means of macroscopic conductance measurements.

DOI: 10.12693/APhysPolA.119.569 PACS numbers: 73.21.La, 73.23.Ad, 03.65.Yz, 85.35.Ds