Size-dependent effects on electrical contacts to nanotubes and nanowires

Abstract

Metal-semiconductor contacts play a key role in electronics. Here we show that for quasi-one dimensional (Q1D) structures such as nanotubes and nanowires, side contact with the metal only leads to weak band realignment, in contrast with bulk metal-semiconductor contacts. Schottky barriers are much reduced compared with the bulk limit, and should facilitate the formation of good contacts. However, the conventional strategy of heavily doping the semiconductor to obtain Ohmic contacts breaks down as the nanowire diameter is reduced. The issue of Fermi level pinning is also discussed, and it is demonstrated that the unique density of states of Q1D structures makes them less sensitive to this effect. Our results agree with recent experimental work, and should apply to a broad range of Q1D materials.

Physical Review Letters 97, 026804 (2006)

References in corpus (7)

• Carbon Nanotubes as Schottky Barrier Transistors
• Carbon Nanotube Field-Effect Transistors With Integrated Ohmic Contacts and High-k Gate Dielectrics
• Role of Fermi-level pinning in nanotube Schottky diodes
• Electrical Contacts to Carbon Nanotubes Down to 1nm in Diameter
• Electrical Nanoprobing of Semiconducting Carbon Nanotubes using an Atomic Force Microscope
• Fermi-level alignment at metal-carbon nanotube interfaces: application to scanning tunneling spectroscopy
• Scaling analysis of Schottky barriers at metal-embedded semiconducting carbon nanotube interfaces

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• Empirical transport model of strained CNT transistors used for sensor applications
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• Schottky-like barrier characterization of field-effect transistors with multiple quasi-ballistic channels