Coulomb blockade

In physics, a Coulomb blockade (CB), named after Charles-Augustin de Coulomb's electrical force, is the increased resistance at small bias voltages of an electronic device comprising at least one low-capacitance tunnel junction. Because of the CB, the resistances of devices are not constant at low bias voltages, but increase to infinity for biases under a certain threshold (i.e. no current flows). When few electrons are involved and an external static magnetic field is applied, Coulomb blockade provides the ground for spin blockade (also called Pauli blockade) and valley blockade which includes quantum mechanical effects due to spin and orbital interactions respectively between the electrons.