Construction of ZnTe nanowires/Si p-n heterojunctions for electronic and optoelectronic applications

Nitrogen-doped p-type ZnTe nanowires (NWs) were successfully synthesized by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method. Metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) based on ZnTe NWs and junction field-effect transistors (JFETs) based on ZnTe NW/Si p-n heterojunction were constructed and their devices performances were studied. Compared with MOSFETs, JFETs exhibits greatly enhanced device performances in various aspects, such as the transconductance (g(m)) and I-on/I-off ratio were increased to 1.81 mu S and similar to 10(2), and the subthreshold swing (S) and threshold voltage were reduced to 8.4 V dec(-1) and 2 V, respectively. Moreover, ZnTe NW/Si p-n heterojunctions show excellent rectifying characteristics with rectification ratio up to 10(4) within +/- 5 V and very fast response time of 27.4/85.1 mu s to varying optical signal, which is much shorter than that reported before, representing the fastest response for ZnTe based nano-photodetectors. These results demonstrate that ZnTe NW/Si p-n heterojunctions have great potential in nano-electronic and optoelectronic applications. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.