High-performance nanowire field-effect transistors

Semiconductor nanowires (NWs) 1, 2 have attracted significant interest because of their potential for a variety of different applications, including logic and memory circuitry, photonics devices, and chemical and biomolecular sensors. 3–6 Although many different types of semiconductor NW have been investigated, silicon NWs have become prototypical nanowires because they can be readily prepared, the Si/SiO 2 interface is chemically stable, and Si NWs are utilized in a number of device demonstrations that have well-known silicon-technology-based counterparts.