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Epitaxy is growth of a crystalline layer with an orientation relationship to a crystalline substrate. Homoepitaxy uses the same material; heteroepitaxy uses a different one. A substrate can guide atomic ordering, but a mismatch of lattice parameters introduces strain and can eventually produce misfit dislocations. Thus an apparently flat film need not be strain-free or defect-free. Molecular beam epitaxy controls incident material fluxes in vacuum, while other epitaxial methods use reactive vapors or liquids. The orientation relationship, layer thickness and strain state are distinct parts of the description.

The 1988 study grew alternating iron/chromium layers by molecular beam epitaxy on gallium arsenide. Magnetization and torque measurements tested the magnetic configuration. An AC electrical resistance measurement passed electric current along the layers while the applied magnetic field changed. Comparing field directions and spacer thicknesses linked the resistance decrease to magnetic saturation. Electron microscopy and surface analysis checked layer formation, while leaving atomic-scale interface roughness unresolved.^[ref]

The independent Jülich study used four-terminal sensing on epitaxial Fe/Cr/Fe strips. A single iron film supplied an anisotropic magnetoresistance comparison. Magneto-optic Kerr effect signals and Brillouin light scattering from spin waves identified the layer alignments, rather than inferring them from resistance alone. Field scans along different magnetic axes connected the optical signatures to the resistance changes.^[ref]

Peter Andreas Grünberg's retrospective explains why the preceding interlayer exchange coupling measurements mattered: coupled spin wave modes supplied signatures of magnetic alignment before that alignment became an electrical signal.^[ref]

A resistance curve alone does not reveal the microscopic direction of every magnetic layer. The optical measurements add a different observable, while the reference film tests an orientation-dependent response that can occur without a multilayer. Sample preparation and cross-checks therefore belong to the physical explanation.

Molecular beam epitaxy grows crystalline films by directing controlled beams of material toward a crystalline substrate in a vacuum system. A typical apparatus has source cells, shutters, a heated substrate holder and diagnostic tools such as electron diffraction. Opening or closing shutters changes which species reach the surface, enabling layered heterostructures. Growth quality depends on surface diffusion, incorporation and desorption as well as the arriving flux. The method's value is precise control of composition and interfaces; depositing material in vacuum alone does not ensure epitaxial crystal ordering.

Two suitable epitaxial techniques are metalorganic vapour-phase epitaxy and molecular beam epitaxy.

MOVPE supplies metalorganic group-III precursors and a reactive nitrogen source in a flowing gas. Surface reactions, mass transport and selective nucleation control growth; it is well suited to conformal radial growth and relatively high throughput. molecular beam epitaxy supplies molecular/atomic beams in high vacuum, with beam fluxes and shutters controlling delivery. It offers precise flux switching and in-situ surface monitoring, but flux, geometry and nitrogen activation can limit growth rate and conformality. Neither method automatically gives identical growth on all wire crystal facets.

For an overall target near $40\mathrm{nm}\mathrm{mi}{\mathrm{n}}^{-1}=2.4\mu \mathrm{m}{\mathrm{h}}^{-1}$, MOVPE is a natural choice. This is a practical selection, not a theorem that molecular beam epitaxy cannot attain that rate.

Prepare the substrate/buffer and patterned SiN growth mask; grow donor-doped gallium nitride cores with controlled axial morphology; change conditions to favor radial deposition and incorporate indium for the thin indium gallium nitride active shell; then overgrow acceptor-doped p-GaN without degrading the active layer. Finally expose/contact the core and shell appropriately. Monitor facet-dependent thickness and indium content, and characterize the interfaces. If the active-layer normal rate itself were $40\mathrm{nm}\mathrm{mi}{\mathrm{n}}^{-1}$, 5 nm would take 7.5 s; the stated overall rate does not establish that the alloy shell actually grows at that same rate.

Grow the semiconductor stack epitaxially by molecular beam epitaxy or metalorganic vapor-phase epitaxy on a suitable crystalline GaAs substrate. Sequential changes of source flux or precursor supply set the GaAs/AlGaAs compositions, while dopant supply sets the n-type and p-type regions. Growth time and calibrated rate control the thicknesses of the InGaAs quantum well and the alternating reflector layers.

epitaxy preserves a common crystal orientation and clean, abrupt semiconductor interfaces. These are important both for carrier confinement in the quantum well and for low-loss optical reflection. For a DBR centered at free-space wavelength ${\lambda }_0$, the approximate quarter-wave condition is $n_j{d}_j={\lambda }_0/4$ in each layer. Ordinary deposition of a polycrystalline coating would not provide the required active semiconductor heterostructure.

Molecular beam epitaxy is a suitable research-scale choice. Independently controlled elemental beams and shutters allow abrupt composition changes, controlled silicon donor incorporation and thin spacer layers. Growth can proceed sequentially from the GaAs substrate through the undoped GaAs, undoped AlGaAs spacer, doped AlGaAs supply layer and highly doped GaAs cap.

A clean crystalline surface and controlled substrate temperature support epitaxial interfaces; separating the donor layer from the channel is modulation doping. Metalorganic vapor-phase epitaxy can also grow such structures, but MBE's controllable research-scale layer sequence is a strong match to the stated task. Merely depositing the right total elemental amounts would not guarantee the required crystallinity and interface abruptness.

A modulation-doped GaAs-AlGaAs electron gas is confined on the GaAs side of the interface. The larger-gap AlGaAs supplies a conduction-band barrier; charge transfer from remote donors and the resulting electric field bend the bands into an approximately triangular well. transverse electronic mode wavefunctions are confined normal to the interface but free in its plane. electrons settle into the well until their electrochemical potential agrees with the donor/contact environment. An undoped spacer separates mobile electrons from ionized donors, reducing impurity scattering. Equilibrium has one Fermi level across the structure; the conduction-band edge is not flat. Surface depletion and the cap also affect the profile. The original drawing illustrates one occupied confinement transverse electronic mode; a single spatial electron gas need not in general imply only one occupied vertical transverse electronic mode.

molecular beam epitaxy can grow a clean GaAs buffer/channel, an undoped AlGaAs spacer, a Si-doped AlGaAs supply region and a protective GaAs cap on a suitable substrate. Control composition, interface quality and background impurities during growth; placing dopants directly in the channel defeats the principal mobility advantage. Define a mesa or isolation region, fabricate low-resistance ohmic contacts to the buried gas, and pattern fine metal split gates by electron beam lithography and the lift-off process. Negative gate bias depletes the underlying gas, leaving a narrow channel between the gates. Check contact resistance, leakage, carrier density and mobility; operation with ballistic electron transport requires channel length shorter than the relevant scattering lengths and smooth confinement on the wavelength scale. The lithographic gap does not equal the electrical width because of lateral depletion.

For a long uniform channel supporting ballistic electron transport, transverse confinement creates thresholds $E_n$ with continuous longitudinal propagation above each threshold. One directed spin branch of a transverse electronic mode has states per length $dk/(2\pi )$ and group velocity $v={\hslash }^{-1}dE/dk$. Hence $vdk/(2\pi )=dE/h$: velocity cancels the one-dimensional density of states. Including two unresolved spin states,For low temperature and small bias, a fully open transverse electronic mode has $T_n(E_F)=1$, givingThe assumptions are ideal reservoirs/contacts, negligible reflection and interactions that would invalidate the independent-subband description, and unresolved spin splitting. A resolved spin branch contributes $e^2/h$. The finite two-terminal electrical resistance is a contact/mode-injection effect, despite the absence of dissipative scattering inside the ideal channel.

For voltage partition in a ballistic constriction, a short saddle has strong local electric-field and electrostatic screening variation near its entrances and barrier, rather than the uniform Ohmic voltage gradient of a diffusive wire. Right-moving incident states inherit the source distribution and left-moving states the drain distribution; there is no unique local equilibrium chemical potential inside an ideal ballistic saddle. The electrostatic potential must be determined self-consistently. In a symmetric rigid-barrier approximation, the barrier follows the mean lead potential and half the electrochemical bias lies on each side. This is a stated approximation, not a universal spatial voltage profile.

For a saddle $U=U_0-m^{\ast }{\omega }_x^2{x}^2/2+m^{\ast }{\omega }_y^2{y}^2/2$, transverse electronic mode thresholds are $E_n=U_0+\hslash {\omega }_y(n+1/2)$. The smooth-barrier transmission is $T_n(E)=[1+\exp (-2\pi (E-E_n)/(\hslash {\omega }_x)){]}^{-1}$, approaching a step for a sharp threshold on the bias/thermal scale.^[ref]

Let ${\mu }_{S,D}=E_F\pm eV/2$ and assume no additional bias dependence of $T_n$. At zero temperature,When the source and drain sample $N+1$ and $N$ thresholds, the differential electrical conductance is $(N+1/2)2e^2/h$. These half plateaus arise from the two ends of the bias window, not fractional carriers. The dc ratio $I/V$ need not share their plateau values. Heating, spin splitting and interaction-induced features must be distinguished experimentally.

In bias spectroscopy of one-dimensional subbands, plot differential electrical conductance or its gate derivative against gate bias and source-drain bias. Threshold branches occur where $E_n(V_g)={\mu }_S$ or ${\mu }_D$. When one bias-window edge meets $E_n$ and the other $E_{n+1}$,Thus the intersections of adjacent threshold branches calibrate the one-dimensional spacing directly in energy. A gate lever arm $\alpha =-e^{-1}\partial E_n/\partial V_g$ can then convert gate intervals to energy; it should be measured rather than guessed. Asymmetric bias partition, a moving barrier or a gate-dependent spacing modifies slopes and plateau weights, requiring the corresponding self-consistent bias model.

A high-mobility modulation-doped GaAs-AlGaAs electron gas is grown by molecular beam epitaxy as a clean layered semiconductor heterostructure. An undoped gallium arsenide region is followed by an undoped aluminium gallium arsenide spacer and a donor-doped barrier region, commonly with a protective cap. The closely matched crystal structures allow a high-quality heterojunction. The spacer supplies a crucial separation: the mobile electrons reside away from the ionized donors, reducing impurity scattering compared with putting the donors directly in the conducting layer.

The larger conduction band energy on the aluminium gallium arsenide side permits donor electrons to transfer into gallium arsenide. The resulting charge separation creates band bending; together with the band offset, it forms a roughly triangular quantum well at the interface. The normal-direction wavefunction is confined, while motion parallel to the interface remains approximately free:When only the lowest confinement subband is occupied, this is a two-dimensional electron gas. It is the quantized normal motion, not a physically zero layer thickness, that makes the low-energy system two-dimensional.

At zero magnetic field, one occupied spin-degenerate parabolic subband has constant density of states per area per energy, $D_0=m^{\ast }/(\pi {\hslash }^2)$ above its edge. A perpendicular field quantizes the in-plane orbital motion into Landau levels:Here $g^{\ast }$ is the material's effective spin factor and $e$ is the positive elementary charge; no free-electron $g=2$ assumption is made for this semiconductor. Each resolved spin branch contains $e|B|/h$ states per unit area. The ideal density of states becomeswith Landau-level broadening in a real sample. The Landau filling factorcounts the carrier density in units of one spin-resolved level's degeneracy. Two unresolved spin branches have twice that degeneracy; resolved branches must not each be counted twice.

Disorder localizes states in the broadened level tails, while extended states occur near level centres. As $B$ varies, occupation of localized states can change without changing the number of current-carrying edge channels. This produces a finite-width quantum Hall plateau, rather than quantization only at isolated fields. In a mobility gap, longitudinal resistivity approaches zero and the Hall magnitude is $R_K/N=h/(N{e}^2)$ for $N$ occupied transmitting branches. When the chemical potential passes through extended states, longitudinal dissipation peaks and the Hall value changes to another plateau. A spectral density of states can remain nonzero where transport is localized. Very strong disorder can destroy the resolved quantum Hall regime; the statement is not that any amount of disorder improves it.

The original plot is schematic, not fitted data. At fixed sheet density, increasing $|B|$ decreases Landau filling factor, so the Hall magnitude climbs through $R_K/N$ plateaus while longitudinal peaks separate the plateaus. The signed Hall voltage depends on carrier and probe conventions.

For the gate calculation, the target sheet density is fixed by the desired Landau filling factor:Use top-gate density tuning in the parallel-plate approximation. The geometric capacitance per unit area isThereforeThe gate must become more negative relative to the electron gas, reducing its density. The voltage is the change from the gate setting associated with the stated initial density; if that setting is defined as zero, it is the required gate voltage. Work-function offsets, trapped charge and quantum capacitance are neglected. An absolute voltage referenced to some other uncalibrated potential cannot be inferred from geometry alone. Numerical values use exact SI $h=6.62607015\times 10^{-34}\mathrm{J}\mathrm{s}$ and $e=1.602176634\times 10^{-19}\mathrm{C}$, and ${ϵ}_0\simeq 8.8541878188\times 10^{-12}\mathrm{F}{\mathrm{m}}^{-1}$.^[ref]

For the subsequently specified five-channel plateau, the chemical potential between the fifth and sixth resolved branches means $N=5$, not ten. The physical contact order in the PDF is $1,2,3,4$ along one side of the mesa. Use ideal equilibrating Ohmic contacts and the Landauer-Büttiker formula, rather than inferring a longitudinal measurement merely from the contacts being drawn on one edge.

Choose one field polarity so the chiral order is $1\to 2\to 3\to 4\to 1$. With $G_H=5e^2/h$,Contacts 2 and 4 are voltage probes, so $I_2=I_4=0$. With $V_3=0$, this gives $V_2=V_1$, $V_4=V_3=0$, and $I_1=G_H{V}_1$. Hencefor this circulation. Reversing the field reverses the contact order and gives $R_{13,24}=-h/(5e^2)$ with the same voltage ordering. The resistance magnitude is $5.16\mathrm{k\Omega }$; it is not zero. Contact 2 samples the outgoing source potential and contact 4 the outgoing drain potential for the chosen chirality.

The antidot is a depleted island supporting closed quantum Hall edge states. Tunnelling between those states and opposite propagating edges can produce resonant backscattering and resistance peaks as $B$ varies. One electronic Aharonov-Bohm phase winds by $2\pi$ when flux through a fixed effective orbit area $S$ changes by $h/e$. Using the supplied area as that effective area,With the two spin-split branches of the lowest orbital level occupied, the common Coulomb-dominated antidot oscillation model has two charge rearrangements per added $h/e$ flux. Both branches contribute to charge buildup; screening and their capacitive coupling can make tunnelling through the outer edge occur twice during the cycle. It then givesThis is two electron-tunnelling resonances per flux cycle, not evidence that the mobile particles have charge $2e$. The primary charging model specifically addresses this two-spin regime.^[ref]

The sketch shows resistance peaks in a weak-backscattering configuration, with arbitrary height and linewidth because tunnel couplings and temperature are unspecified. A two-spin count alone does not force two independent noninteracting resonance series to be exactly half a flux period apart: their relative positions also depend on spin splitting and confinement. Thus $51.7\mathrm{mT}$ describes the stated charging-model interpretation; $103.4\mathrm{mT}$ is the single-electron fixed-area flux period. The actual enclosed edge-orbit area can differ from the geometrically depleted area.

For bulk filling two and total forward transmission $\mathcal{T}$ in spin-resolved units, ideal chiral probes give the longitudinal four-terminal resistanceResonant loss of transmission therefore gives peaks. Their size, background and detailed shape cannot be calculated from the supplied area and bulk filling alone. If the gates instead make a tunnelling path that enhances forward transmission, the resonant contrast can be reversed; the plotted peak convention is explicitly the backscattering one.

Daniel Tsui, Horst Störmer and Arthur Gossard reported the effect in 1982. They grew gallium arsenide–aluminium gallium arsenide layers by molecular beam epitaxy, separating the two-dimensional electron gas from its semiconductor doping. They cut Hall bars and made indium contacts. Low-field measurements established number density and charge carrier mobility. A perpendicular magnetic field sweep measured transverse and longitudinal sheet resistivities at several temperatures. Cooling sharpened the plateau near $3h/e^2$ and the longitudinal minimum at filling factor $1/3$; integer plateaus provided an internal comparison. The longitudinal minimum remained finite at the lowest temperature: zero-temperature vanishing was unresolved. This established anomalous transport, without directly measuring excitation electric charge.^[ref]

The two readouts test different statements. A single intersection with $R_H=3R_K$ would also occur on the smooth classical relation $R_H=B/(n_{s}e)$ at $n_{s}h/(eB)=1/3$. A quantum Hall plateau instead persists over a magnetic field interval. Comparing transverse and longitudinal signals helps distinguish that plateau from a contact-placement artefact; the quantum Hall conductivity tensor inversion quantifies the contamination when longitudinal sheet resistivity is nonzero.

Later, 1997 shot noise measurements associated with quantum tunnelling at filling factor $1/3$ tested the excitation electric charge separately, finding $e/3$. That is a different observable from a Hall plateau.^[ref]