Fabrication and Characterization of Gate-All-Around Silicon Nanowires on Bulk Silicon

This paper reports on the top-down fabrication and electrical performance of silicon nanowire (SiNW) gate-all-around (GAA) n-type and p-type MOSFET devices integrated on bulk silicon using a local-silicon-on-insulator (SOI) process. The proposed local-SOI fabrication provides various nanowire cross sections: Omega-like, pentagonal, triangular, and circular, all controlled by isotropic etching using nitride spacers and silicon sacrificial oxidation. The reported top-down SiNW fabrication offers excellent control of wire doping and placement, as well as ohmic source and drain contacts. A particular feature of the process is the buildup of a tensile strain in all suspended nanowires, attaining values of few percents, reflected in stress values higher than 2-3 GPa. A very high yield (>90%) is obtained in terms of functionality of long-channel SiNW GAA mosfet. Device characteristics are reported from cryogenic temperature (T = 5 K) up to 150 degC, and promising characteristics in terms of low-field electron mobility, threshold voltage control, and subthreshold slope are demonstrated. Low field mobility for electrons up to 850 cm2 /Vmiddots is reported at room temperature in suspended devices with triangular cross sections; this mobility enhancement is explained by the process-induced tensile strain. In short, suspended SiNW GAA with small triangular cross sections, a single-electron transistor (SET) operation regime is highlighted at T = 5 K. This is attributed to a combined effect of strain and corner conduction in triangular channel cross sections, suggesting the possibility to hybridize CMOS and SET functions by a unique nanowire fabrication platform.

The high-mobility bended n-channel silicon nanowire transistor

Didier Bouvet, Luca De Michielis, Mihai Adrian Ionescu, Kirsten Emilie Moselund, Mohammad Najmzadeh, Vincent Pott

This work demonstrates a method for incorporating strain in silicon nanowire gate-all-around (GAA) n-MOSFETs by oxidation-induced bending of the nanowire channel and reports on the resulting improvement in device performance. The variation in strain measured during processing is discussed. The strain profile in silicon nanowires is evaluated by Raman spectroscopy both before device gate stack fabrication (tensile strains of up to 2.5% are measured) and by measurement through the polysilicon gate on completed electrically characterized devices. Drain current boosting in bended n-channels is investigated as a function of the transistor operation regime, and it is shown that the enhancement depends on the effective electrical field. The maximum observed electron mobility enhancement is on the order of 100% for a gate bias near the threshold voltage. Measurements of stress through the full gate stack and experimental device characteristics of the same transistor reveal a stress of 600 MPa and corresponding improvements of the normalized drain current, normalized transconductance, and low-field mobility by 34% (at maximum gate overdrive), 50% (at g max), and 53%, respectively, compared with a reference nonstrained device at room temperature. Finally, it is found that, at low temperatures, the low-field mobility is much higher in bended devices, compared with nonbended devices.

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers2010

Self-Assembled Liquid-Gated Zinc Oxide Nanowire Transistors

Vivek Pachauri

This thesis aims at the site-specific realization of self-assembled field-effect transistors (FETs) based on semiconducting Zinc oxide NWs and their application towards chemical and bio-sensing in liquid medium. At first, a solution based growth method for hierarchical ZnO nanostructures was devised in order to achieve synthesis of high quality ZnO NWs. This solution based growth method was then deployed for the growth of NWs from preferred sites on a substrate. In order to make a transistor, microelectrode pairs prewritten on a Si/SiO2 chip (4mm◊4mm) using standard photolithography procedure served as growth sites and also formed source and drain terminals. The NWs bridging these "source" and "drain" electrodes formed the transistor channel. The procedure here yields ZnO NWs in up to 100 percent of the positions available for growth. The site-specific self-assembled fabrication of ZnO NW FETs was evaluated in terms of scalability and applications. The procedure was extended from 4mm◊4mm silicon chips to large area silicon wafers (80mm◊80mm) and flexible substrates of Kapton polyimide of the same size. On the large area substrates this procedure yields ZnO NWs in up to 80 percent of the positions available for growth, which can be bettered. Furthermore, the method was also employed to fabricate ZnO NW FETs in situ in a microfluidic channel. For this purpose the precursor solution was let to flow on to the microelectrode pairs with the help of microfluidic channels assembled on top of the substrate. The substrate was heated locally under the microelectrode pairs to stimulate the NW growth. Thus a solution-based self-assembled fabrication of NW FETs was achieved locally inside a microfluidic channel. Microfluidic channels were made of silicon nitride (Si3N4) on top of Si/SiO2 chips and facilitated the characterization of FETs in liquid medium. Alternatively, microfluidic channels made of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) were used for characterization of transistor devices in liquids. In order to deploy FETs in liquids, the back-gate is replaced by a reference electrode (Ag/AgCl) and the potential is applied through a liquid surrounding the transistor channel (ZnO NW). The liquid surrounding the ZnO NW creates an electrochemical double layer (EDL) on the NW surface which in turn gives rise to the gate capacitance. The resulting gating effect can be used to modulate the NW conductance depending on the voltage applied through the liquid. The ZnO NW transistors showed a current modulation of up to 6 orders of magnitude, high field-effect mobilities (around 1.85 cm2/Vs) and sub-threshold slopes as low as 105 mV/decade. This is the first demonstration of liquid-gated FETs using ZnO NWs. The liquid-gated FETs are used as a basic device for further sensing trials in liquids. For this purpose, the FETs were functionalized with receptor molecules. These so called ion-selective FETs (ISFETs) were demonstrated as functional pH sensors for liquids with pH values from 6 to 10. The NWs functionalized with analyte-sensitive molecules on their surface are influenced electrically by the presence of analytes in the surrounding liquid. Any change in the amount of analyte present in the surrounding liquid is thus reflected in the electrical transport characteristics of the FET. 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane (3-APTES) molecules were used to functionalize the ZnO NWs in order to construct the pH sensors. Subsequently, the realization of a biosensor based on ZnO NW transistors is demonstrated. Label-free direct detection of urea molecules was carried out from a solution of urea in buffer. ZnO NWs were electrochemically functionalized with the enzyme urease incorporated into an electro-polymerized polypyrrole matrix. Urease molecules act as specific receptors for urea molecules and catalyze an enzymatic reaction. This reaction causes a pH change in the vicinity of NWs, which is reflected in the field-effect characteristics of transistor. The performance of liquid-gated ZnO NW FETs used as chemical and biological sensor can be further improved by employing a metal gate in liquid medium. This was established by fabricating liquid gated metal-semiconductor FET (MESFET) based on ZnO NWs. ZnO NWs were decorated with metal nanoparticles (NPs) by using an electrochemical deposition method. The NPs were then used as metal gate and devices were characterized by applying a gate voltage on the NPs through the liquid. The realization of metal-semiconductor gate in liquids considerably improved the field-effect characteristics of liquid-gated FETs based on ZnO NWs. The realization of high performance liquid-gated transistors based on ZnO NWs thus constitutes a suitable platform for label-free detection of biomolecules and shows promise for future applications in chemical analysis and medical diagnostics.

EPFL2011

Field-Effect Transistors Based on ZnO Nanowires

Daniel Dominik Kälblein

Semiconductor nanowires are an emerging class of materials with great potential for applications in future electronic devices. The small footprint and the large charge-carrier mobilities of nanowires make them potentially useful for applications with high-integration density, but also to replace thin-film transistors in large-area electronics. This thesis investigates the use of wet-chemically grown ZnO nanowires for the fabrication of high-performance, low-voltage field-effect transistors (FETs). The first part of this thesis addresses the electrical characteristics of the wet-chemically grown ZnO nanowires. The as-grown ZnO nanowires are highly conductive due to a large charge-carrier concentration caused by dopants unintentionally incorporated into the ZnO nanowires during the synthesis. This large charge-carrier concentration makes it difficult to modulate the conductivity of the nanowires by an external electric field, so that the as-grown wires are not suitable for FETs. A post-growth annealing step is employed to dramatically reduce the charge-carrier concentration of the nanowires which makes it possible to fabricate FETs with useful characteristics. ZnO-nanowire FETs in a global back-gate geometry based on annealed ZnO nanowires have a transconductance of 300 nS, an on/off current ratio of 107 and a subthrehold slope of 500 mV/decade. The maximum field-effect mobility of the annealed ZnO nanowires is around 50 cm2/Vs. An important requirement to obtain good FET characterisitcs is to minimize the influence of the source and drain contact resistance on the total device resistance. The material used for the source and drain contacts in this thesis is aluminum. It is demonstrated that the use of a plasma treatment in the contact regions prior to the evaporation of the aluminum contacts can greatly influence the contact properties between ZnO and aluminum. An argon-plasma treatment locally increases the charge-carrier concentration in the ZnO. It is shown that the doping effect of the argon-plasma treatment can be exploited to reduce the contact resistance between alumiunm and ZnO and improve the electrical performance of the FETs. In the second part of this thesis, the influence of the ambient air on the electrical characteristics of the ZnO-nanowire FETs is investigated. The electrical conductivity of the FETs is strongly affected by the distinct atmospheric conditions, which makes it difficult to obtain reliable FET characteristics. The potential of a self-assembled monolayer (SAM) based on fluoroalkylphosphonic acid molecules to passivate the ZnO nanowires against the undesirable effects of the ambient and to stabilize the electrical performance of ZnO-nanowire FETs is demonstrated. The stabilizing effect is attributed to the formation of a densely packed, hydrophobic SAM on the surface of ZnO and aluminum oxide. The quality of the hydrophobic SAMs is confirmed by means of water-contact-angle measurements on SAM-covered ZnO single crystals that show a contact angle of more than 110°. The third part of this thesis is dedicated to the fabrication of high-performance ZnO-nanowire FETs with patterned metal top-gate electrodes. A top-gate fabrication process is developed that uses a very thin gate dielectric consisting only of an alkylphosphonic acid SAM that can be deposited from solution. The insulating quality of the SAM is investigated for top-gate FETs that utilize either gold or aluminum for the top-gate electrode. Gold top-gate FETs show a transconductance of 1 µS, an on/off current ratio of 107, and a steep subthreshold slope of 90 mV/decade. The thin gate dielectric makes it possible to operate the gold top-gate FETs at low voltages of 1 V and simultaneously reduces the undesired gate current by more than three orders of magnitude compared to gold top-gate FETs that have been fabricated without a gate dielectric (MESFETs). The gate current of the gold top-gate FETs with SAM gate dielectric is as low as 1 pA for gate-source voltages between -1 V and 0.5 V. When aluminum is used for the top-gate electrode, a hybrid dielectric is formed at the interface between the SAM and the aluminum, consisting of the SAM and a spontaneously formed aluminum oxide layer. Owing to the hybrid gate dielectric, the aluminum top-gate FETs are operated with gate currents below 1 pA for voltages up to 3 V. The top-gate fabrication process does not require temperatures above 160 °C, which makes it possible to fabricate FETs on unconventional substrates that cannot tolerate high temperatures, such as glass or flexible plastics. Integrated circuits on single ZnO nanowires that are fabricated on glass and plastic substrates are demonstrated. The maximum switching frequency of the inverters is 1 MHz.

EPFL2011

Field-Effect Transistors Based on ZnO Nanowires

Daniel Dominik Kälblein

EPFL2011

Self-Assembled Liquid-Gated Zinc Oxide Nanowire Transistors

Vivek Pachauri

EPFL2011