Electrical Properties and Photoresponses of Silicon Nanowires with Selective Anchored Gold Nanoparticles via Scanning Probe Bond Breaking Nanolithography

Abstract

In this paper, we describe the electrical characteristics of silicon nanowire (SiNW) devices after different surface chemical modifications and report the enhanced photoconductivity responses of SiNW devices bonded to selective gold nanoparticles (AuNPs). Bridging bottom-up and top-down nanofabrication techniques for nanoelectronics and nanobiosensors applications, we demonstrate a new approach to deposit patternwise AuNPs onto the SiO2 surface with nanometer-scale resolution. Our research team fabricated the SiNW device via e-beam lithography on a (100)-oriented p-type silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafer and used silanization with N-(2-amino-ethyl)-3-aminopropyl-trimethoxysilane (AEAPTMS) to form an aminosilane self-assembled monolayer (SAM) on the surface of the device. In this experiment, we used local field-induced scanning probe bond breaking nanolithography to selectively decompose the aminosilane monolayer on the SiO2 surface of the SiNW device. Via electrostatic forces, negatively charged AuNPs selectively anchor on undecomposed areas of the SiNW device as demonstrated via X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS).