Gate coupling and carrier distribution in silicon nanowire/nanoribbon transistors operated in electrolyte

The transfer characteristics of back-gate silicon nanowire/nanoribbon (NW/NR) transistors measured in electrolyte exhibit a significantly higher on-current and a steeper subthreshold behavior than measured in air. Simulation results show that the gate capacitance for a NW/NR of a trapezoidal cross-section immersed in water is significantly higher than that exposed to air. Electrostatics simulations further show that for NWs/NRs with small widths, carriers are mainly accumulated at the two side-edges when they are immersed in water. Even the top surface of the NWs/NRs sees more accumulated carriers than the bottom one does; the latter is in fact located closest to the back-gate. These observations suggest that the interface properties at the side-edges and the top surface are crucial for NW/NR transistors to achieve high sensitivity when performing real-time sensing experiments in electrolyte. Finally, the sensitivity of back-gate NW/NR field-effect transistors to charge changes in electrolyte is found to have a weak dependence on the NW/NR width when the doping concentration is below 1017 cm−3. For higher NW/NR doping concentrations, narrower NWs/NRs are more sensitive.