Dissociation of vertical semiconductor diatomic artificial molecules

We investigate the dissociation of few-electron circular vertical semiconductor double quantum dot artificial molecules at 0 T as a function of interdot distance. Slight mismatch introduced in the fabrication of the artificial molecules from nominally identical constituent quantum wells induces localization by offsetting the energy levels in the quantum dots by up to 2 meV, and this plays a crucial role in the appearance of the addition energy spectra as a function of coupling strength particularly in the weak coupling limit.