  We fabricated strongly confined Schottky-gated quantum point contacts by
etching Si/SiGe heterostructures and observed intriguing conductance
quantization in units of approximately 1e2/h. Non-linear conductance
measurements were performed depleting the quantum point contacts at fixed
mode-energy separation. We report evidences of the formation of a half 1e2/h
plateau, supporting the speculation that adiabatic transmission occurs through
1D modes with complete removal of valley and spin degeneracies.
