Future Trends in Microelectronics: From Nanophotonics to Sensors to Energy

Nanowires: Technology, Physics and Perspectives

D. Grützmacher, Th. Schäpers, S. Manti, S. Feste, Q. T. Zhao, H. Hardtdegen, R. Calarco, M. Lepsa, and N. Demarina

Institute for Semiconductor Nanoelectronics and Jülich Aachen Research Alliance Forschungszentrum Jülich, D-52425 Jülich, Germany

1.   Introduction

Nanowires (NWs) are currently considered as strong contenders to provide possible solutions in several areas of semiconductor research, including the integration of III-V compounds on Si, the ultimate scaling of CMOS devices, high speed and low power circuitry (“green transistor”), and the realization of quantum information technology. This versatility of NWs has attracted the attention of numerous research groups studying their fabrication and characterization. However, even though substantial progress has been made in recent years, including the demonstration of many device prototypes, some of the fundamental NW physics is not yet fully understood in areas as varied as NW nucleation, structural, transport and optical properties.

Silicon NWs are grown typically either by the vapor-liquid-solid (VLS) mechanism using Au particles as catalyst^1-3 or are fabricated by nanolithography.⁴ The latter approach makes it possible to carve NWs into strained Si,⁵ leading to uniaxially strained structures. The NW can be wrapped with a surrounding gate, providing optimized control of the transistor channel due to improved electrostatics compared to planar CMOS technology. Further, the NW ...