Conduction in ultra-thin SOI nanowires prototyped by FIB milling

This work describes a simple yet fast fabrication method to prototype silicon-on-insulator nanowires (SOINW) by using FIB milling and sacrificial oxidation on SOI substrate. Al-gated silicon wires with 8 nm diameter and 50-200 nm length are successfully demonstrated. The Si-wires are heavily implanted with phosphorus in between two oxidation steps, resulting in a film structure in which the hopping conduction mode occurs in the electron accumulation regime. Conduction oscillations are observed in 8 nm diameter Si-wires at room temperature, in contrast with large geometry samples where no oscillations are visible even at low temperature and where the conduction appears as being temperature activated. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.