Group IV Semiconductor Nanowires for Sensing and Nanoelectronic Applications

During the last decade, semiconductor nanowires (NWs) have received significant academic and commercial attention due to their attractive electrical and mechanical properties and large surface area to volume ratios. They have a variety of possible applications including nanoelectronics, nanophotonics, photovoltaics, sensorics, etc. Among all semiconductor NWs the ones based on group IV materials have the added value of being the most silicon (Si) compatible. This would allow their relatively easy integration into the existing semiconductor technology platform.

In my talk I will first present the NWs that we are working with. These include top-down fabricated Si and germanium (Ge) NWs having widths down to 6-7 nm as well as bottom-up grown alloyed germanium-tin (Ge1-xSnx) NWs with x = 0.07-0.1, diameters of 50-70 nm and lengths of 1 to 3 µm. In the future we plan to work also with alloyed SiGe and SiGeSn NWs with varying content of the different materials.

I will next discuss the innovative devices that we are targeting, namely junctionless nanowire transistors (JNTs) and reconfigurable field effect transistors (RFETs). In particular, we are interested in Si JNTs for sensing application as well as in Ge and GeSn JNTs for digital logic. Concerning RFETs, we are currently working on Si RFETs and commencing activities on Ge RFETs. In the future we are planning to work also on GeSn RFETs.

Finally, I will pay a special attention to a novel device that we recently invented: group IV heterostructure band-to-band tunnel FET (TFET). We are planning to fabricate this device with a scalable and fully CMOS compatible process and expect it to demonstrate high Ion together with low Ioff and hence steep subthreshold slopes.