Comparative study on drain current conduction mechanisms of (100)- and (111)-silicon nanowire using a quantitative current model

Abstract

Over the years, semiconductor nanowires have been extensively researched due to their electrical properties for implementation of nano-to-microscale field-effect transistors (FETs). In order to implement a nanowire integrated device, well-aligned arrays of silicon nanowire are necessary for scalable and repeatable mass production. Although there has been much research on various fabrication processes to implement arrayed silicon-nanowires, few studies on channel conduction mechanism and theoretical modeling have been conducted on top-down fabricated silicon nanowires. In this paper, a comparative study on electrical characteristics of (100)- and (111)-silicon nanowire using a quantitative current model is presented for high-performance silicon-nanowire devices. Compared to silicon nanowire using (100)-silicon, one of the advantages of using (111)-silicon is that it can control the height and width of silicon nanowire through a sequential deep-silicon-etching process. According to the operation mechanism of the silicon-nanowire FET, the height of the silicon nanowire needs to be minimized to achieve high on/off-current ratio and low power consumption at off-state. Using (111)-silicon, it is possible to define height and width independently, which can result in higher performance characteristics.