Gigahertz high-speed single-electron transfer for the realization of a high-accuracy current standard

Abstract

In 2018, the SI ampere will be redefined; the ampere will be realized using a current standard by fixing the elementary charge e. A clock-controlled single-electron pump generates an accurate current, which can be used for the most direct current standard. To this end, it is necessary to realize a high-accuracy high-speed (large-current) operation. In this report, we show high-accuracy measurements of current generated by a silicon single-electron pump in the gigahertz regime. We achieve an extremely low transfer error rate of 9.2×10^-7 at 1 GHz and a world-record high-speed operation at 7.4 GHz.