| AVS 54th International Symposium | |
| Electronic Materials and Processing | Monday Sessions |
| Session EM+NS-MoA |
| Session: | Semiconductor Nanostructures for Electronics and Optoelectronics I |
| Presenter: | Y. Kondratenko, University of Illinois, Urbana - Champaign |
| Authors: | Y. Kondratenko, University of Illinois, Urbana - Champaign R Vaidyanathan, University of Illinois, Urbana - Champaign C.T.Z. Kwok, University of Illinois, Urbana - Champaign E.G. Seebauer, University of Illinois, Urbana - Champaign |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
As electronic devices scale deeper into the nanometer regime, key aspects of device performance become increasingly dominated by point defects within the semiconductor. An obvious example is current flow in silicon nanowire devices, which is heavily influenced by residual point defects. The present work discusses two new mechanisms for controllably manipulating point defect concentrations in semiconductors at the nanoscale, using silicon as a specific example. In the first mechanism, the ability of free surfaces or solid interfaces to annihilate point defects within the solid can be altered by several orders of magnitude through either chemical state modification or mild ion bombardment. The resulting dangling bonds at the surface or interface interact with the defects through direct bond-addition reactions and through electrostatic attraction or repulsion. In the second mechanism, low-level photostimulation to produce excess charge carriers changes the average charge state of certain varieties of point defects, which in turn affects their diffusion rates toward nearby interfaces. Depending on the temperature and time of exposure, diffusion rates can be either enhanced or inhibited. Experiments using arsenic and boron diffusion as markers for defect behavior in silicon are described that demonstrate both mechanisms. Rate-equation-based modeling accurately describes all qualitative and most quantitative aspects of the results.