Fabrication of conducting Si nanowire arrays

The recent development of the superlattice nanowire pattern transfer technique allows for the fabrication of arrays of nanowires at a diameter, pitch, aspect ratio, and regularity beyond competing approaches. Here, we report the fabrication of conducting Si nanowire arrays with wire widths and pitches of 10-20 and 40-50 nm, respectively, and resistivity values comparable to the bulk through the selection of appropriate silicon-on-insulator substrates, careful reactive-ion etching, and spin-on glass doping. These results promise the realization of interesting nanoelectronic circuits and devices, including chemical and biological sensors, nanoscale mosaics for electronics, and ultradense field-effect transistor arrays. (C) 2004 American Institute of Physics.