Water passivation effect on polycrystalline silicon nanowires

Defects present in the grain boundaries of polycrystalline materials are known to impede carrier transport inside the materials, and the electronic device performance having such materials as active channels will be adversely affected. In this work, dramatic improvement in device performance was observed as field-effect transistors with polycrystalline silicon nanowire (poly-SiNW) channels were exposed to a wet environment. Passivation of defects in the poly-SiNW by H+ and/or OH− contained in the aqueous solution is proposed to explain the phenomenon.