III-V compound semiconductors offer a path to continue Moore's law due to their excellent electron transport properties. One major challenge, integrating III-V's on Si, can be addressed by using vapor-liquid-solid grown vertical nanowires. InAs is an attractive material due to its superior mobility, although InAs metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) typically suffer from band-to-band tunneling caused by its narrow band gap, which increases the off-current and therefore the power consumption. In this work, we present vertical heterostructure InAs/InGaAs nanowire MOSFETs with low off-currents provided by the wider band gap material on the drain side suppressing band-to-band tunneling. We demonstrate vertical III-V MOSFETs achieving off-current below 1 nA/μm while still maintaining on-performance comparable to InAs MOSFETs; therefore, this approach opens a path to address not only high-performance applications but also Internet-of-Things applications that require low off-state current levels.

Infrared (IR) radiation detectors are used in numerous applications from thermal imaging to spectroscopic gas sensing. Obtaining high speed and sensitivity, low-power operation, and cost-effectiveness with a single technology remains to be a challenge in the field of IR sensors. By combining nano-thermoelectric transduction and nanomembrane photonic absorbers, we demonstrate uncooled IR bolometer technology that is material-compatible with large-scale CMOS fabrication and provides fast and high sensitivity response to long-wavelength IR (LWIR) around 10 µm. The fast operation speed stems from the low heat capacity metal layer grid absorber connecting the sub-100 nm-thick n- and p-type Si nano-thermoelectric support beams, which convert the radiation induced temperature rise into voltage. The nano-thermoelectric transducer-support approach benefits from enhanced phonon surface scattering in the beams, leading to reduction in thermal conductivity, which enhances the sensitivity. We demonstrate different size nano-thermoelectric bolometric photodetector pixels with LWIR responsitivities, specific detectivities, and time constants in the ranges 179 V/W–2930 V/W, 1.5 × 107 cm Hz1/2/W–3.1 × 108 cm Hz1/2/W, and 66 µs–3600 µs, respectively. We benchmark the technology against different LWIR detector solutions and show how nano-thermoelectric detector technology can reach the fundamental sensitivity limits posed by phonon and photon thermal fluctuation noise.

We present a low-temperature processing scheme for the integration of either lateral or vertical nanowire (NW) transistors with a multilayer back-end-of-line interconnect stack. The nanowire device temperature budget has been addressed, and materials for the interconnect fabrication have been selected accordingly. A benzocyclobutene (BCB) polymer is used as an interlayer dielectric, with interconnect vias formed by reactive ion etching. A study on via etching conditions for multiple interlayer dielectric thicknesses reveals that the sidewall slope can be engineered. An optimal reactive ion etch is identified at 250 mTorr chamber pressure and power of 160 W, using an SF6 to O2 gas mix of 4%. This results in a low via resistance, even for scaled structures. The BCB dielectric etch rate and dielectric-to-soft mask etch selectivity are quantified. Electrical measurements on lateral and vertical III-V NW transistors, before and after the back-end-of-line process, are presented. No performance degradation is observed, only minor differences that are attributed to contact annealing and threshold voltage shift.