  The effect of an electric field on the conductance of ultrathin films of
metals deposited on substrates coated with a thin layer of amorphous Ge was
investigated. A contribution to the conductance modulation symmetric with
respect to the polarity of the applied electric field was found in regimes in
which there was no sign of glassy behavior. For films with thicknesses that put
them on the insulating side of the superconductor-insulator transition, the
conductance increased with electric field, whereas for films that were becoming
superconducting it decreased. Application of magnetic fields to the latter,
which reduce the transition temperature and ultimately quench
superconductivity, changed the sign of the reponse of the conductance to
electric field back to that found for insulators. We propose that this
symmetric response to capacitive charging is a consequence of changes in the
conductance of the a-Ge layer, and is not a fundamental property of the physics
of the superconductor-insulator transition as previously suggested.
