9505425 Kane This grant provides support for a theoretical research program to investigate electronic transport in mesoscopic systems. The research will explore the interplay between quantum confinement, electron-electron interactions and transport in ultra-small electronic systems. A deeper understanding of these issues will lead to a better appreciation of the limitations and opportunities available in microstructure electronic devices. In addition to addressing fundamental issues of physics, the research is important technologically, as the miniaturization of electronic devices approaches the nanoscale level and continues, perhaps, down to the molecular level. The specific objectives of the research will be (1) to investigate the role of the Coulomb blockade for tunneling through metal and semiconductor quantum dots in the regime of strong coupling to leads; (2) to understand the effects of disorder on interacting one-dimensional systems and edge states in the quantum Hall effect; and (3) to study the nature of electronic transport through molecules, which is an issue of crucial importance to the emerging field of molecular electronics as well as to the imaging of molecules on surfaces using the scanning tunneling microscope. %%% Theoretical research will be conducted on the electronic properties of very small systems in which the system size is comparable to the scale of the electronic effects. Besides being of fundamental importance in physics, these studies are crucial to understanding the limits and opportunities in reducing the size of microelectronic devices. ***
