High inversion current in silicon nanowire field effect transistors

Silicon nanowire (SiNW) field effect transistors (FETs) with channel widths down to 20 nm have been fabricated by a conventional top-down approach by using electron-beam lithography. The SiNW device shows higher inversion channel current density than the control devices. The extracted electron inversion mobility of the 20 nm width nanowire channel (approximate to1000 cm(2)/Ns) is found to be 2 times higher than that of the reference MOSFET (approximate to480 cm(2)Vs) of large dimension (W greater than or equal to 1 mum). We attribute this mobility increase to strain-induced changes in the band structure of the SiNW after oxidation.