Presence versus absence of charging energies in PbTe quantum dots

Yuhao Wang; Lining Yang; Wenyu Song; Li Chen; Zehao Yu; Xinchen He; Zeyu Yan; Jiaye Xu; Ruidong Li; Weizhao Wang; Zonglin Li; Shuai Yang; Shan Zhang; Xiao Feng; Tiantian Wang; Yunyi Zang; Lin Li; Runan Shang; Qi-Kun Xue; Ke He; Hao Zhang

doi:10.1103/yqwg-nxjd

Presence versus absence of charging energies in PbTe quantum dots

Yuhao Wang^1,2,*, Lining Yang ^2,*, Wenyu Song^2,*, Li Chen^3,*, Zehao Yu², Xinchen He ², Zeyu Yan², Jiaye Xu², Ruidong Li² et al.

Weizhao Wang ², Zonglin Li², Shuai Yang², Shan Zhang², Xiao Feng^2,4,5,6, Tiantian Wang^4,6, Yunyi Zang^4,6, Lin Li⁴, Runan Shang^4,6, Qi-Kun Xue^2,4,5,6,7, Ke He^2,4,5,6,†, and Hao Zhang ^1,‡

¹College of Semiconductors, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 518055, China
²State Key Laboratory of Low Dimensional Quantum Physics, Department of Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
³School of Physics and Optoelectronic Engineering, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou 510006, China
⁴Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Sciences, Beijing 100193, China
⁵Frontier Science Center for Quantum Information, Beijing 100084, China
⁶Hefei National Laboratory, Hefei 230088, China
⁷Department of Physics, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 518055, China

^*These authors contributed equally to this work.
^†Contact author: kehe@tsinghua.edu.cn
^‡Contact author: zhanghao@sustech.edu.cn

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Phys. Rev. B 113, 245430 – Published 29 June, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/yqwg-nxjd

Abstract

Charging energy ( $E_{C}$ ) is essential in quantum dot (QD) devices. Previous studies on PbTe QDs have reported both the presence and absence of $E_{C}$ . To resolve this ambiguity, we vary the QD size, i.e., the cross-sectional area of PbTe nanowires, and track the evolution of $E_{C}$ . For large cross-sectional areas ( $\sim 16 000 {nm}^{2}$ ), the PbTe QDs exhibit no measurable $E_{C}$ , while quantized levels are well resolved. Decreasing this area successively to 5000, 1500, and $460 {nm}^{2}, E_{C}$ becomes finite and increases to 80, 160, and $210 µ eV$ , respectively. We further demonstrate the strong tunability of local gates, which can tune the PbTe device from the QD regime to the regime of ballistic transport. These results address concerns regarding the large dielectric constant of PbTe and provide key insights in engineering advanced PbTe quantum devices.

Physical Review B

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Presence versus absence of charging energies in PbTe quantum dots

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