Nonequilibrium electron tunneling in metal-insulator-metal junctions

Abstract
The small structure in the conductance curve near zero bias of metal-insulator-metal tunnel junctions has been studied extensively. These experiments are analyzed in detail in a nonequilibrium model. It is shown that this type of zero-bias anomaly can be accounted for entirely by an electron bottleneck arising from the blocking of tunneling states due to nonzero electron relaxation times.