Enhancement of Carrier Mobility in Semiconductor Nanostructures by Dielectric Engineering

We propose a technique for achieving large improvements in carrier mobilities in 2- and 1-dimensional semiconductor nanostructures by modifying their dielectric environments. We show that by coating the nanostructures with high-kappa dielectrics, scattering from Coulombic impurities can be strongly damped. Though screening is also weakened, the damping of Coulombic scattering is much larger, and the resulting improvement in mobilities of carriers can be as much as an order of magnitude for thin 2D semiconductor membranes, and more for semiconductor nanowires.