Wafer-level and highly controllable fabricated silicon nanowire transistor arrays on (111) silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafers for highly sensitive detection in liquid and gaseous environments

This paper presents a wafer-level and highly controllable fabrication technology for silicon nanowire field-effect transistor (SiNW-FET arrays) on (111) silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafers. Herein, 3, 000 SiNW FET array devices were designed and fabricated on 4-inch wafers with a rate of fine variety of more than 90% and a dimension deviation of the SiNWs of less than ± 20 nm in each array. As such, wafer-level and highly controllable fabricated SiNW FET arrays were realized. These arrays showed excellent electrical properties and highly sensitive determination of pH values and nitrogen dioxide. The high-performance of the SiNW FET array devices in liquid and gaseous environments can enable the detection under a wide range of conditions. This fabrication technology can lay the foundation for the large-scale application of SiNWs.