Characterisation of a suspended nanowire channel thin-film transistor with sub-100 nm air gap

A novel suspended nanowire (NW) channel thin-film transistor (TFT) with sub-100 nm air gap has been fabricated and characterised. With a simple and low-cost over-etching-time-controlled reactive ion etching technique and a buffered-oxide etch wet-etching process, a suspended NW of 27 nm and an air gap of 10 nm were achieved. The resultant suspended-NW-channel TFTs showed an ultra-low subthreshold swing (52 mV/dec) and considerable hysteresis window (3.7 V). Finally, the impacts of device dimensions on the characteristics of suspended NW TFTs were also investigated.