Tailoring the carrier mobility of semiconductor nanowires by remote dielectrics

The dielectric environment of thin semiconductor nanowires can affect the charge transport properties inside the wire. In this work, it is shown that Coulomb impurity scattering in thin nanowires can be damped strongly by coating the wire with a high-kappa dielectric. This leads to an increase in the mobility of free charges inside the wire and can be used as a post-growth technique to improve the conductivity of thin nanowires. (c) 2007 American Institute of Physics.