CMOS-compatible gate-all-around silicon nanowire detector

In this paper, we demonstrate gate-all-around (GAA) single crystalline nanowires (SiNWs) that are fabricated using top-down standard CMOS front-end processes. The GAA silicon nanowires are fabricated in well-defined locations with high-quality electrical contacts, and controlled geometry and alignment. These SiNW FETs fabricated in this process have demonstrated repeatable electrical performance with threshold voltages of ~0.2V and subthreshold slopes of ~80mV/dec. The p-i-n silicon nanowires are highly sensitive to the intensity and polarization of the incident light. The results in this work demonstrate that individual SiNWs are good candidates for high resolution optical sensing and allow for tuning of the optical properties of the nanoscale devices by precise control of the nanowire geometry and orientation of the incident light. These top-down fabricated SiNWs can be easily integrated in high density arrays for enhanced light absorption, resulting in imaging sensors with nanoscale spatial resolution.