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Donor deactivation in silicon nanostructures

Nature Nanotechnology volume 4, pages 103–107 (2009)Cite this article

Abstract

The operation of electronic devices relies on the density of free charge carriers available in the semiconductor; in most semiconductor devices this density is controlled by the addition of doping atoms. As dimensions are scaled down to achieve economic and performance benefits, the presence of interfaces and materials adjacent to the semiconductor will become more important and will eventually completely determine the electronic properties of the device. To sustain further improvements in performance, novel field-effect transistor architectures, such as FinFETs1,2 and nanowire field-effect transistors3,4,5,6,7, have been proposed as replacements for the planar devices used today, and also for applications in biosensing8,9,10 and power generation11. The successful operation of such devices will depend on our ability to precisely control the location and number of active impurity atoms in the host semiconductor during the fabrication process. Here, we demonstrate that the free carrier density in semiconductor nanowires is dependent on the size of the nanowires. By measuring the electrical conduction of doped silicon nanowires as a function of nanowire radius, temperature and dielectric surrounding, we show that the donor ionization energy increases with decreasing nanowire radius, and that it profoundly modifies the attainable free carrier density at values of the radius much larger than those at which quantum12,13 and dopant surface segregation14 effects set in. At a nanowire radius of 15 nm the carrier density is already 50% lower than in bulk silicon due to the dielectric mismatch15 between the conducting channel and its surroundings.

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Figure 1: Characterization of n-type silicon nanowires.
Figure 2: Effect of surface states.
Figure 3: Resistivity versus electronic radius.
Figure 4: Doping deactivation in silicon nanowires.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge fruitful discussions with P. Solomon, S. Karg, D. Webb and R. Stutz. This work was partially supported by the European Union (NODE 015783).

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  1. IBM Research GmbH, Zurich Research Laboratory, Säumerstrasse 4, Rüschlikon, 8803, Switzerland

    Mikael T. Björk, Heinz Schmid, Joachim Knoch, Heike Riel & Walter Riess

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Correspondence to Mikael T. Björk.

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Björk, M., Schmid, H., Knoch, J. et al. Donor deactivation in silicon nanostructures. Nature Nanotech 4, 103–107 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2008.400

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