Wide Electrical Tunability of the Valley Splitting in a Doubly gated Silicon-on-Insulator Quantum Well

Abstract

The valley splitting of 2D electrons in doubly-gated silicon-on-insulator quantum wells is studied by low temperature transport measurements under magnetic fields. At the buried thermal-oxide SiO$_{2}$ interface, the valley splitting increases as a function of the electrostatic bias $\delta n = n_{B}-n_{F}$ (where $n_{B}$ and $n_{F}$ are electron densities contributed by back and front gates, respectively) and reaches values as high as $6.3$~meV, independent of the total carrier concentration of the channel. We show that $\delta n$ tunes the square of the wave function modulus at the interface and its penetration into the barrier, both of which are key quantities in a theory describing interface-induced valley splitting, and is therefore the natural experimental parameter to manipulate valleys in 2D silicon systems. At the front interface, made of a thin ``high-k'' dielectric, a smaller valley splitting is observed, adding further options to tune the valley splitting within a single device.