Schottky contact on ultra-thin silicon nanomembranes under light illumination.
By repeating oxidation and subsequent wet chemical etching, we produced ultra-thin silicon nanomembranes down to 10 nm based on silicon-on-insulator structures in a controllable way. The electrical property of such silicon nanomembranes is highly influenced by their contacts with metal electrodes, in which Schottky barriers (SBs) can be tuned by light illumination due to the surface doping. Thermionic emission theory of carriers is applied to estimate the SB at the interface between metal electrodes and Si nanomembranes. Our work reveals that the Schottky contacts with Si nanomembranes can be influenced by external stimuli (like light luminescence or surface state) more heavily compared to those in the thicker ones, which implies that such ultra-thin-film devices could be of potential use in optical detectors.
Department of Materials Science, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, People's Republic of China.
Enming
E
Song
Wenping
W
Si
Ronggen
R
Cao
Ping
P
Feng
Ingolf
I
Mönch
Gaoshan
G
Huang
Zengfeng
Z
Di
Oliver G
OG
Schmidt
Yongfeng
Y
Mei
D004566:Electrodes; D008027:Light; D008029:Lighting / Q000379:methods; D008566:Membranes / Q000737:chemistry*; D008670:Metals / Q000737:chemistry; D049329:Nanostructures / Q000737:chemistry*; D012825:Silicon / Q000737:chemistry*; D013499:Surface Properties
D008670:Metals; D012825:Silicon