Reconfigurable Silicon Nanowire Transistors
- 23 November 2011
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Chemical Society (ACS) in Nano Letters
- Vol. 12 (1), 119-124
- https://doi.org/10.1021/nl203094h
Abstract
Over the past 30 years electronic applications have been dominated by complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) devices. These combine p- and n-type field effect transistors (FETs) to reduce static power consumption. However, CMOS transistors are limited to static electrical functions, i.e., electrical characteristics that cannot be changed. Here we present the concept and a demonstrator of a universal transistor that can be reversely configured as p-FET or n-FET simply by the application of an electric signal. This concept is enabled by employing an axial nanowire heterostructure (metal/intrinsic-silicon/metal) with independent gating of the Schottky junctions. In contrast to conventional FETs, charge carrier polarity and concentration are determined by selective and sensitive control of charge carrier injections at each Schottky junction, explicitly avoiding the use of dopants as shown by measurements and calculations. Besides the additional functionality, the fabricated nanoscale devices exhibit enhanced electrical characteristics, e.g., record on/off ratio of up to 1 × 109 for Schottky transistors. This novel nanotransistor technology makes way for a simple and compact hardware platform that can be flexibly reconfigured during operation to perform different logic computations yielding unprecedented circuit design flexibility.Keywords
This publication has 25 references indexed in Scilit:
- Programmable nanowire circuits for nanoprocessorsNature, 2011
- Spin States of the First Four Holes in a Silicon Nanowire Quantum DotNano Letters, 2009
- The missing memristor foundNature, 2008
- Fringing field effects on electrical resistivity of semiconductor nanowire-metal contactsApplied Physics Letters, 2008
- Single Crystalline PtSi Nanowires, PtSi/Si/PtSi Nanowire Heterostructures, and NanodevicesNano Letters, 2008
- Sub-100 Nanometer Channel Length Ge/Si Nanowire Transistors with Potential for 2 THz Switching SpeedNano Letters, 2008
- Silicon-Nanowire Transistors with Intruded Nickel-Silicide ContactsNano Letters, 2006
- Nanowire-based programmable architecturesACM Journal on Emerging Technologies in Computing Systems, 2005
- Single-crystal metallic nanowires and metal/semiconductor nanowire heterostructuresNature, 2004
- Nanowire Crossbar Arrays as Address Decoders for Integrated NanosystemsScience, 2003