High Frequency top-down Junction-less Silicon Nanowire Resonators

TL;DR

This paper reports the first realization of top-down silicon nanowire resonators transduced by junction-less FET and piezoresistive effects, demonstrating high sensitivity and potential for dense sensor arrays in CMOS-compatible processes.

Contribution

It introduces a novel monolithically integrated top-down silicon nanowire resonator with dual transduction mechanisms, achieving small dimensions and high sensitivity.

Findings

Achieved silicon nanowires down to ~20nm width.

Demonstrated dual transduction with similar signal-to-background ratios.

Measured Allan deviation of ~20ppm (FET) and ~3ppm (PZR) at room temperature.

Abstract

We report here the first realization of top-down silicon nanowires (SiNW) transduced by both junction-less field effect transistor (FET) and the piezoresistive (PZR) effect. The suspended SiNWs are among the smallest top-down SiNWs reported to date, featuring widths down to ~20nm. This has been achieved thanks to a 200mm-wafer-scale, VLSI process fully amenable to monolithic CMOS co-integration. Thanks to the very small dimensions, the conductance of the silicon nanowire can be controlled by a nearby electrostatic gate. Both the junction-less FET and the previously demonstrated PZR transduction have been performed with the same SiNW. These self-transducing schemes have shown similar signal-to-background ratios, and the PZR transduction has exhibited a relatively higher output signal. Allan deviation AD of the same SiNW has been measured with both schemes, and we obtain AD~20ppm for the FET detection and AD~3ppm for the PZR detection at room temperature and low pressure. Orders of magnitude improvements are expected from tighter electrostatic control via changes in geometry and doping level, as well as from CMOS integration. The compact, simple topology of these elementary SiNW resonators opens up new paths towards ultra-dense arrays for gas and mass sensing, time keeping or logic switching systems in SiNW-CMOS platform.