Quantum Transport Length Scales in Silicon-based Semiconducting Nanowires: Surface Roughness Effects

Abstract

We report on a theoretical study of quantum charge transport in atomistic models of silicon nanowires with surface roughness-based disorder. Depending on the nanowires features (length, roughness profile) various conduction regimes are explored numerically by using efficient real space order N computational approaches of both Kubo-Greenwood and Landauer-Buttiker transport frameworks. Quantitative estimations of the elastic mean free paths, charge mobilities and localization lengths are performed as a function of the correlation length of the surface roughness disorder. The obtained values for charge mobilities well compare with the experimental estimates of the most performant undoped nanowires. Further the limitations of the Thouless relationship between the mean free path and the localization length are outlined.

13 pages, to appear in PRB

References in corpus (10)

• The Kernel Polynomial Method
• Tunable Supercurrent Through Semiconductor Nanowires
• On the Validity of the Parabolic Effective-Mass Approximation for the Current-Voltage Calculation of Silicon Nanowire Transistors
• Coherent Single Charge Transport in Molecular-Scale Silicon Nanowire Transistors
• Metallic and semi-metallic <100> silicon nanowires
• A Theoretical Investigation of Surface Roughness Scattering in Silicon Nanowire Transistors
• Scaling theory put into practice: first-principles modeling of transport in doped silicon nanowires
• Electronic transport in Si nanowires: Role of bulk and surface disorder
• Nano-wires with surface disorder: Giant localization lengths and quantum-to-classical crossover
• On the properties of surface reconstructed silicon nanowires

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Structural, electronic, and transport properties of silicon nanowires
• Model for the on-site matrix elements of the tight-binding hamiltonian of a strained crystal: Application to silicon, germanium and their alloys
• Atomistic simulations of low-field mobility in Si nanowires: Influence of confinement and orientation
• Electron transport in quantum wire superlattices
• Efficient linear scaling method for computing the thermal conductivity of disordered materials
• Disorder-free localization around the conduction band edge of crossing and kinked silicon nanowires