High-Performance Sb-Based III-V Nanowires Synthesized on Amorphous Substrates: From the Formation Mechanism to p-Channel Transistor Applications

Abstract:

In recent years, due to the narrow direct bandgap and outstanding carrier mobility, Sb-base nanowires (NWs), such as GaSb, have been extensively explored for high-performance electronics and optoelectronics. Importantly, these p-channel nanowires can be potentially integrated with n-type InSb, InAs or InGaAs NW devices via different NW transfer techniques to facilitate the III-V CMOS technology. However, there are still very few works till now focusing on the electronic transport properties of GaSb NWs. Here, we successfully demonstrate the synthesis of crystalline, stoichiometric and dense GaSb NWs on amorphous substrates, instead of the commonly used III-V crystalline substrates, InAs or GaAs NW stems as others reported. The obtained NWs are found to grow via the VLS mechanism with a narrow distribution of diameter uniformly along the entire NW length with minimal tapering and surface coating. Notably, when configured into FETs, the NWs exhibit impressive electrical characteristics with the peak hole mobility of ~200 cm²V^-1s^-1. All these have illustrated the promising potency of such NWs directly grown on amorphous substrates for various technological applications, as compared with the conventional MOCVD grown GaSb NWs.

Reference:

1. Yang Z., Wang F.Y., Han N., Lin H., Cheung H.Y., Fang M., Yip S.P., Hung T.F., Wong C.Y., Ho J.C. "Crystalline GaSb nanowires synthesized on amorphous substrates: from the formation mechanism to p-channel transistor applications", ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, 5, 10946-10952, 2013.
2. Yang Z., Han N., Wang F.Y., Cheung H.Y., Shi X., Yip S.P., Hung T.F., Lee M.H., Wong C.Y., Ho J.C. "Carbon doping of InSb nanowires for high-performance p-channel field-effect-transistors", Nanoscale, 5, 9671-9676, 2013.