(Invited) High Performance Plug-and-Play Nanoelectronic Devices

Abstract

We present a versatile suite of nanomanufacturing processes to fabricate, in an entirely bottom-up fashion, high performance modular semiconductor devices. Our overall approach, which is a distinct departure from the fully integrated nature of conventional wafer-based fabrication, promises dispersions of "plug-and-play" building blocks suitable for all manner of massively-scalable electronic and photonic systems. The vapor-liquid-solid (VLS) mechanism is central to our methodology, allowing for the bottom-up growth and nanoscale compositional encoding of single-crystalline semiconductor materials (i.e., group IV, III-V, and oxide). In a newly developed bottom-up patterning process – Selective CoAxial Lithography via Etching of Surfaces (SCALES) – we leverage the chemical differences between encoded segments to yield surface masks with nanoscale precision. Such masks can subsequently direct the deposition of the thin films (e.g., oxides, metals) needed to complete the construction of fully-functional devices. We also introduce the Geode process to increase the throughput of nanowire manufacturing by orders-of-magnitude beyond the state-of-the-art. This scalable nanowire growth method utilizes an unconventional substrate: the interior surface of hollow silica microcapsules lined with the metal nanoparticles that seed nanowire growth. These processes constitute a powerful new platform with which to fabricate and deploy high performance semiconductor devices and systems.