Fabrication of Conducting Si Nanowire Arrays

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel fabrication method for highly regular, ultra-narrow silicon nanowire arrays with low resistivity, enabling advanced nano-electronic applications such as sensors and dense transistor arrays.

Contribution

It introduces a fabrication process for conducting silicon nanowire arrays with precise dimensions and low resistivity, advancing nano-electronic device manufacturing.

Findings

Nanowire widths of 10-20 nm achieved

Resistivity comparable to bulk silicon

Potential for nano-electronic device integration

Abstract

The recent development of the superlattice nanowire pattern transfer (SNAP) technique allows for the fabrication of arrays of nanowires at a diameter, pitch, aspect ratio, and regularity beyond competing approaches. Here, we report the fabrication of conducting Si nanowire arrays with wire widths and pitches of 10-20 nm and 40-50 nm, respectively, and resistivity values comparable to the bulk through the selection of appropriate silicon-on-insulator substrates, careful reactive-ion etching, and spin-on glass doping. These results promise the realization of interesting nano-electronic circuits and devices, including chemical and biological sensors, nano-scale mosaics for molecular electronics, and ultra-dense field-effect transistor (FET) arrays.