Ultra thin silicon alternative set to ‘revolutionise’ future of electronics
1 min read
In the search for the next generation of semiconductors, researchers claim to have successfully integrated ultra thin layers of the semiconductor indium arsenide onto a silicon substrate to create a nanoscale transistor with 'excellent electronic properties'.
Teams from the US Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California Berkeley suggest that the silicon alternative has superior electron mobility and velocity, making it a strong candidate for future high speed, low power electronics.
"We've shown a simple route for the heterogeneous integration of indium arsenide layers down to a thickness of 10nanometers on silicon substrates," said Ali Javey, pictured, a faculty scientist in Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division, who led this research. "The devices we subsequently fabricated were shown to operate near the projected performance limits of III-V devices with minimal leakage current. Our devices also exhibited superior performance in terms of current density and transconductance as compared to silicon transistors of similar dimensions."
To make the XOI platforms, Javey and his collaborators grew single crystal indium arsenide thin films (10 to 100nm thick) on a preliminary source substrate, then lithographically patterned the films into ordered arrays of nanoribbons. After being removed from the source substrate through a selective wet etching of an underlying sacrificial layer, the nanoribbon arrays were transferred to the silicon/silica substrate via a stamping process.
Although the researchers only used indium arsenide as a compound semiconductor, they now hope that the technology will accommodate other compound III/V semiconductors as well. Javey and his team are confident that this concept could be used to directly integrate high performance photodiodes, lasers, and light emitting diodes on conventional silicon substrates.
