SiCWIRE · Silicon Carbide Nanowires for Electronic and biosensing applications

Silicon Carbide Nanowires for Electronic and biosensing applications

SICWIRE was dedicated to develop the technology of SiC nanowire field effect transistors (NWFETs). SiC nanowires (NWs) combine the properties of 1D materials with that of SiC and devices based on SiC nanowires would present concrete advantages. For instance, SiC NWFETs can present concrete advantages in two areas of application: More Moore: Logic applications. SiC NWFETs have the potential of high temperature operation and eventually of efficient power dissipation and thus, they can address main issues in semiconductor device scaling. The area of nanoelectronics is a major one in what it concerns market size and impact on every-day life. More than Moore: Biosensor applications. SiC exhibits superior to Si chemical stability and biocompatibility and SiC NWFET-based biosensors can thus, exhibit challenging performances. The main interest comes from the stability of SiC in aqueous solutions like the physiological ones, which is not the case for Si. Previous studies of SiC NWFETs employed bottom-up SiC NW growth techniques and back gated geometry. The transistors exhibited weak gating effect and the device switching off was not achievable even for high negative gate voltages. This mediocre performance has been attributed to poor material properties of the grown materials and/or the basic technology employed for fabricating SiC NWFETs resulting mainly in poor quality interface with gate dielectrics. A possible solution for resolving material quality issues is to form the NWs by top-down (mainly plasma etching) techniques from epitaxial SiC material. Use of top gate or gate-all-around (GAA) geometries with thermal or deposited oxides would be the solution for addressing the poor dielectric/SiC interface. SICWIRE main aim was to develop the technology of SiC NWFETs with top-gate or GAA device geometry incorporating NWs fabricated by top-down techniques. Then, devices suitable for the two areas of applications would be fabricated as demonstrators of the SiC NWs use advantages. In addition, SICWIRE targeted to enhance the professional maturity of the fellow with a consequent effect in his career by reaching a higher grade (“Research Director”, the highest for Greek researcher) and higher academic positions.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз