Screening and polaronic effects induced by a metallic gate and a surrounding oxide on donor and acceptor impurities in silicon nanowires

We present self-consistent tight binding calculations of the electronic structure of donor and acceptor impurities in silicon nanowires surrounded by a gate oxide (SiO2 or HfO2) and a metallic gate. These environments efficiently screen the potential of the impurities so that their ionization energy strongly decreases with respect to the case of freestanding nanowires. It is also shown that the carriers trapped by the impurities form a polaron due to the response of the ions in the surrounding oxide layer. We predict that the polaron shift represents a large part of the impurity ionization energy, in particular, in HfO2. Our work demonstrates the importance of screening and polaronic effects on the transport properties in nanoscale devices based on Si nanowires. (c) 2008 American Institute of Physics.