The charge stored on a capacitor is not quantized: it consists of polarization charges generated by displacing the electron gas with respect to the positive lattice ions and can take arbitrary magnitudes. The charge transfer across a tunnel junction, however, is quantized in units of the electron charge (singleelectron tunneling), and may be suppressed due to the Coulomb interaction (Coulomb bl...

1 Single electron capacitance spectroscopy of vertical quantum dots using a single electron transistor. M. Koltonyuk, D. Berman , N. B. Zhitenev and R. C. Ashoori Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139 L. N. Pfeiffer and K. W. West Lucent Technologies Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ 07974 We have incorporated an aluminum single electron transistor (...