Scientists at the University of California, Davis, recently demonstrated a nanowire transistor with a three-dimensional structure that successfully integrates silicon and non-silicon materials into an integrated circuit. The researchers said that the technology is expected to help silicon breakthrough the bottleneck and pave the way for faster and more stable manufacturing of electronic and photonic devices.
Silicon is currently the most common type of electronic material, but it is not a panacea. The silicon integrated circuits established on the basis of traditional etching processes have been small in size, which limits the speed and integration of the system. In addition, some "congenital deficiencies" of conventional silicon circuits make it impossible to obtain applications under certain special conditions, such as high temperature environments above 250 degrees Celsius, high-power, high-voltage circuits, and some optical circuits. Therefore, many scientists envisage introducing other semiconductor materials into silicon integrated circuits to make them more adaptable. However, after an attempt, it was found that the etching process used in the manufacture of conventional microcircuits is not suitable. Under the influence of lattice mismatch and thermal properties, silicon and non-silicon materials are difficult to bond together.
An article published by the Physicists Organization Network on May 15 stated that in order to solve this problem, Saif al-Islam, professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, Davis, and his team developed an extremely subtle Nanowire transistors can connect materials such as gallium arsenide, gallium nitride or indium phosphide on a silicon substrate. These nanowires can act as a bridge to integrate these semiconductor materials into more complex electronic or photonic devices. And they have also developed a technology that can precisely control the number of nanowires to keep their physical properties consistent.
Islam said that this suspension structure has many advantages: First, it is easy to cool; second, it is easier to deal with thermal expansion than a planar structure transistor. This new type of circuit can be used to create sensors that can operate in a variety of extreme environments, such as temperature sensors that can operate inside aircraft engines. In the future, the technology is expected to find applications in automobiles, ships, oil extraction facilities, spacecraft, and human implant devices. In addition, due to the full use of a number of mature technologies and compatibility with the equipment currently used to produce silicon integrated circuits, the introduction of new technologies does not require the replacement of existing production lines.
The related papers were published in the most recent issue of Advanced Materials magazine. The funding for this project is provided by the National Science Foundation and related agencies of the Korean government. (Wang Xiaolong)
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