Coulomb staircase in STM current through granular films

The electron transport through an array of tunnel junctions consisting of an STM tip and a granular film is studied both theoretically and experimentally. When the tunnel resistance between the tip and a granule on the surface is much larger than those between granules, a bottleneck of the tunneling current is created in the array. It is shown that the period of the Coulomb staircase(CS) is given by the capacitance at the bottleneck. Our STM experiments on Co-Al-O granular films show the CS with a single period at room temperature. This provides a new possibility for single-electron-spin-electronic devices at room temperature.