Silicon-Based Nano Devices

Many groups around the world are using bottom-up, self-assembly techniques to create new nanomaterials that have interesting electronic, optical and magnetic properties. At the same time several companies have used top-down microelectronics technology to successfully demonstrate MOS transistor operation at channel lengths as small as 5nm. It is clear therefore that as silicon technology approaches nanometer dimensions, remarkable opportunities will exist to combine nanomaterials, quantum phenomena and microelectronics technology in creative ways to produce new types of silicon device for a wide range of electronic, photonic and magnetics applications. Our strategy on the platform grant will be to explore the applications of new nanomaterials and nano-pillar structures in high frequency silicon-based devices. Nano-pillars offer very interesting possibilities for devices, since laterally confined structures can be created using electron-beam lithography and combined with vertical tunnelling barriers created using epitaxy, chemical vapour deposition or wet chemistry. We aim to research a variety of pillar-based devices, with the ultimate aim of fabricating scalable tunnelling devices and ultimate MOS devices at a low temperature. Nanomaterials have considerable potential for devices, particularly when self-assembled nanostructures are combined with electron beam lithography to place nanomaterials in precise locations on a silicon wafer. We intend to investigate the device applications of a variety of nanomatertials, beginning with vacancy-fluorine clusters, chiral metamaterials and magnetic nanodots and proceding to new nanomaterials that emerge from collaborations with nanomaterials groups in the UK and elsewhere.