Material engineering of percolating silicon nanowire networks for reliable and efficient electronic devices

• Published in: Materials chemistry and physics Vol. 238; p. 121871
• Main Authors: Legallais, Maxime, Nguyen, Thi Thu Thuy, Cazimajou, Thibauld, Mouis, Mireille, Salem, Bassem, Ternon, Céline
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Lausanne Elsevier B.V 01-12-2019; Elsevier BV; Elsevier
• Subjects: Alumina encapsulation; Aluminum oxide; Display devices; Electrical characterizations; Electronic devices; Engineering Sciences; Field effect transistor; Field effect transistors; Flexible components; Low temperature; Micro and nanotechnologies; Microelectronics; Nanowires; Percolating network; Percolation; Semiconductor devices; Silicon; Silicon nanowire; Transistors; Field effect transistor; Percolating network; Electrical characterizations; Silicon nanowire; Alumina encapsulation
• ISSN: 0254-0584; 1879-3312
• DOI: 10.1016/j.matchemphys.2019.121871

Motivated to produce reliable and performant SiNW-based transistors, we present in this work how percolating networks composed of randomly oriented SiNWs, called nanonets, are a promising material if they are well engineered. We demonstrate that a proper material engineering of nanonets via alumina encapsulation allows to drastically enhance the electrical characteristics of back gate field effect transistors (FETs). Based on a simple, low temperature (≤400 °C) and up-scalable process of integration, the fabricated FETs exhibit a low off-current in the picoampere range while maintaining very good on-performance, up to the microampere and thus on-to-off ratio exceeding 105. As stated in this work, these nanonet-FETs present not only comparable electrical performances to reported single SiNW-based transistors with the same back-gated architecture but also good device-to-device reproducibility. This initial benchmarking clearly indicates that Si nanonet-based devices display essential features in terms of performances and fabrication process for sensing and flexible electronics.
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•Alumina encapsulation is introduced as an efficient material engineering method•Encapsulation drastically enhances the electrical properties of Si nanowire networks•Studies of electrical properties were carried out by statistical characterizations•Benchmarking of nanonet-based devices against single silicon nanowire ones is done•Nanonet devices offer major breakthroughs in terms of elaboration and performance