Electrical and optical characteristics of heterojunction devices composed of silicon nanowires and mercury selenide nanoparticle films on flexible plastics.

A pn heterojunction device based on p-type silicon (Si) nanowires (NWs) prepared by top-down method and n-type mercury selenide (HgSe) nanoparticles (NPs) synthesized by the colloidal method have been fabricated on a flexible plastic substrate. The synthesized HgSe NPs were analyzed through the effective mass approximation. The characteristics of the heterojunction device were examined and studied with the energy band diagram. The device showed typical diode characteristics with a turn-on voltage of 1.5 V and exhibited a high rectification ratio of 10(3) under relatively low forward bias. Under illumination of 633-nm-wavelength light, the device presented photocurrent efficiency of 117.5 and 20.1 nA/W under forward bias and reverse bias conditions, respectively. Moreover, the photocurrent characteristics of the device have been determined by bending of the plastic substrate upward and downward with strain of 0.8%. Even though the photocurrent efficiency has fluctuations during the bending cycles, the values are roughly maintained for 10(4) bending cycles. This result indicates that the fabricated heterojunction device has the potential to be applied as fundamental elements of flexible nanoelectronics.

Nanocrystal-based complementary inverters constructed on flexible plastic substrates.

We demonstrate a nanocrystal (NC)-based complementary inverter constructed on a flexible plastic substrate. The NC-based complementary inverter consists of n-type HgSe NC- and p-type HgTe NC-based thin-film transistors (TFTs). Solid films on a plastic substrate obtained from HgSe and HgTe nanocrystals by thermal transformation are utilized as the n- and p-channel layers in these TFTs, respectively. The electrical properties of these component TFTs on unstrained and strained substrates are characterized and the performance of the inverter on the flexible substrate is investigated. The inverter on the unstrained substrate exhibits a logic gain of about 8, a logic swing of 90%, and a noise margin of 2.0 V. The characteristics of the inverter are changed under tensile and compressive strains, but not very significantly. Moreover, a comparison of the electrical characteristics of the n- and p-channel TFTs and the inverter is made in this paper.

Dynamic electrical characteristics of low-power ring oscillators constructed with inorganic nanoparticles on flexible plastics.

In this study, we demonstrate for the first time the low-power and stable performance of a ring oscillator constructed on a flexible plastic with solution-processable inorganic nanoparticles (NPs). Our flexible ring oscillator is composed of three inverters based on n- and p-type inorganic NP thin-film transistors. Each of the component inverters exhibits a gain of ∼80 at a voltage of 5 V. For the ring oscillator, the sine waves are generated with a frequency of up to 12 kHz. The waveforms are undistorted under strained conditions and maintained even after 5000 bending cycles. The frequency and waveform of the output waves obtained from our flexible ring oscillator are analyzed and discussed in detail.

Fabrication of arrayed Si nanowire-based nano-floating gate memory devices on flexible plastics.

Arrayed Si nanowire (NW)-based nano-floating gate memory (NFGM) devices with Pt nanoparticles (NPs) embedded in Al2O3 gate layers are successfully constructed on flexible plastics by top-down approaches. Ten arrayed Si NW-based NFGM devices are positioned on the first level. Cross-linked poly-4-vinylphenol (PVP) layers are spin-coated on them as isolation layers between the first and second level, and another ten devices are stacked on the cross-linked PVP isolation layers. The electrical characteristics of the representative Si NW-based NFGM devices on the first and second levels exhibit threshold voltage shifts, indicating the trapping and detrapping of electrons in their NPs nodes. They have an average threshold voltage shift of 2.5 V with good retention times of more than 5 x 10(4) s. Moreover, most of the devices successfully retain their electrical characteristics after about one thousand bending cycles. These well-arrayed and stacked Si NW-based NFGM devices demonstrate the potential of nanowire-based devices for large-scale integration.

Reduction of hysteresis in HgSe nanoparticle-based thin-film transistors using blocking oxide layers on plastics.

In this study, the hysteresis mechanism is investigated for bottom-gate HgSe nanoparticle (NP)-based thin-film transistors (TFTs) using cross-linked poly vinyl alcohol (PVA) as the gate dielectric on plastics. The hysteresis loop with the clockwise direction is observed and the width of the hysteresis is reduced at long delay times. These phenomena indicate that the origin of the hysteresis is the injection of electrons from the gate electrode to the trap site located in the PVA layer. The widths of the hysteresis curves taken from the TFTs are not reduced even though the annealing treatment for the PVA gate dielectric is performed under N2, O2, and in a vacuum at 120 degrees C for 1 hour. The electron injection from the gate electrode is effectively prevented by inserting Al2O3 of 10 nm utilized as the blocking layer between gate electrode and PVA layer. The hysteresis window is remarkably reduced from about 8 V in HgSe NP-based TFTs without blocking layer to nearly 0 V in the TFTs with blocking layer of Al2O3.

Flexible logic circuits composed of chalcogenide-nanocrystal-based thin film transistors.

Complementary NAND and NOR gates composed of p-channel HgTe-nanocrystal (NC) films and n-channel HgSe-NC films were constructed on back-gate patterned plastic substrates. The NAND gate was made of two HgTe-p-channel thin film transistors (TFTs) in parallel and two HgSe-n-channel TFTs in series. The NOR gate was built up with both two HgSe-n-channel TFTs in parallel and two HgTe-p-channel TFTs in series. The mobility and on/off ratio for the p-channel TFTs were estimated to be 0.9 cm(2) V(-1) s(-1) and 10, respectively, and those for the n-channel TFTs were measured to be 1.8 cm(2) V(-1) s(-1) and 10(2), respectively. The NAND and NOR gates were operated with gains of 1.45 and 1.63 and transition widths of 7.8 and 6.2 V, respectively, at room temperature in air. In addition, the operations of the NAND and NOR logics are reproducible for up to 1000 strain cycles.

The transfer of charge carriers photogenerated in ZnO nanoparticles into a single ZnO nanowire.

The transfer of charge carriers, photogenerated in nanoparticles (NPs), into a single nanowire (NW) is demonstrated in this study by conducting a careful comparison of the optoelectronic characteristics of a ZnO NW with ZnO NPs attached to its surface, a bare ZnO NW and a film of close-packed ZnO NPs. Under the illumination of an above-gap light, the photocurrent taken from the NW with the NPs is remarkably higher in magnitude than that obtained from the bare NW, although the photocurrent is substantially lower for the close-packed NPs. The presence of the absorption band of the NPs in the photoresponse spectrum taken from the NW with the NPs reveals that the transfer of the charge carriers photogenerated in the NPs into the NW dramatically enhances the magnitude of the photocurrent flowing in this NW. Nevertheless, during the transfer, the charge carriers experience trapping and detrapping at the interfaces of the NPs and the NW.

Electrical characteristics of floating-gate memory devices with titanium nanoparticles embedded in gate oxides.

The electrical characteristics of titanium (Ti) nanoparticle-embedded metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) capacitors and metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistors (MOSFETs) with blocking Al2O3 layers are studied in this work. Ti nanoparticles were synthesized by a thermal deposition of Ti and by a subsequent thermal annealing procedure. The capacitance versus voltage (C-V) curves obtained for a representative MOS capacitor embedded with Ti nanoparticles exhibit large flat-band voltage shifts, demonstrating the presence of charge storages in the Ti nanoparticles. The counterclockwise hysteresis and flat-band voltage shift observed from the C-V curves imply that electrons are stored in a floating gate layer consisting of the Ti nanoparticles present between the tunneling oxide and control oxide layers in the MOS capacitor and that these stored electrons originate from the p-type Si substrate in inversion condition. Moreover, the source/drain current versus gate voltage curves for the Ti nanoparticle-embedded MOSFETs and the threshold voltage shift characteristics of program/erase time, endurance and retention are analyzed in this paper.

ZnO nanowire-based nano-floating gate memory with Pt nanocrystals embedded in Al(2)O(3) gate oxides.

The memory characteristics of ZnO nanowire-based nano-floating gate memory (NFGM) with Pt nanocrystals acting as the floating gate nodes were investigated in this work. Pt nanocrystals were embedded between Al(2)O(3) tunneling and control oxide layers deposited on ZnO nanowire channels. For a representative ZnO nanowire-based NFGM with embedded Pt nanocrystals, a threshold voltage shift of 3.8 V was observed in its drain current versus gate voltage (I(DS)-V(GS)) measurements for a double sweep of the gate voltage, revealing that the deep effective potential wells built into the nanocrystals provide our NFGM with a large charge storage capacity. Details of the charge storage effect observed in this memory device are discussed in this paper.