Fabrication and electrical and photosensitive properties of silicon nanowire p-n homojunctions

✍ Scribed by Fang, Guojia ;Cheng, Yanzhao ;Ai, Lei ;Li, Chun ;He, Jun ;Wang, Chong ;Huang, Huihui ;Yuan, Longyan ;Zhao, Xingzhong

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2008
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 560 KB
• Volume: 205
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0031-8965
• DOI: 10.1002/pssa.200723266

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

Graded silicon nanowire (SiNW) p–n homojunctions were prepared by an electroless metal deposition method on as‐prepared planar Si p–n junctions made by the B^+^ diffusion method. The nanowire p–n junctions show good rectifying behavior and their turn‐on voltages (0.78 V at room temperature) are found to be independent of the nanowire length. Temperature‐dependent current–voltage properties in the range of 223–363 K were investigated and we demonstrated that the turn‐on voltage decreases from 0.87 V to 0.60 V and the ideality factor n reduces from 8.5 to 3.5 with increasing operating temperature. The results comply very well with the existing p–n junction electron transport mechanism. The potential barrier of a typical SiNW p–n junction obtained through capacitance–voltage measurement accords with its turn‐on voltage. Through I –V and C –V measurements, the nanowire homojunction shows good sensitivity toward visible light and a responsivity of 1.39 A/W under a 5 V reverse bias was obtained. These results present potential applications in future nano‐electronic and photonic devices based on SiNW p–n homojunction arrays. (© 2008 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)