Abstract
We have fabricated silicon nanowire N-MOSFETs using erbium disilicide (ErSi2-x) in a Schottky source/drain back-gated architecture. Although the subthreshold swing (similar to 180 mV/dec) and drain-induced barrier lowering (similar to 500 mV/V) are high due thick BOX as gate oxide, the fabricated Schottky transistors show acceptable drive current similar to 900 mu A/mu m and high I-on/I-off ratio (similar to 10(5)). This is attributed to the improved carrier injection as a result of low Schottky barrier height (Phi(b)) of ErSi2-x/n - Si(similar to 0.3 eV) and the nanometer-sized (similar to 8 nm) Schottky junction. The carrier transport is found to be dominated by the metal-semiconductor interface instead of the channel body speculated from the channel length independent behavior of the devices. Furthermore, the transistors exhibit ambipolar characteristics, which are modeled using thermionic/thermionic-field emission for positive and thermionic-tield emission for negative gate biases.