Atomistic Study on Dopant-Distributions in Realistically Sized, Highly P-Doped Si Nanowires

Abstract

The dependency of dopant-distributions on channel diameters in realistically sized, highly phosphorus-doped silicon nanowires is investigated with an atomistic tight-binding approach coupled to self-consistent Schroedinger-Poisson simulations. By overcoming the limit in channel sizes and doping densities of previous studies, this work examines electronic structures and electrostatics of free-standing circular silicon nanowires that are phosphorus-doped with a high density of ~2e19 cm^-3 and have 12 nm-28 nm cross-sections. Results of analysis on the channel energy indicate that the uniformly distributed dopant profile would be hardly obtained when the nanowire cross-section is smaller than 20 nm. Insufficient room to screen donor ions and shallower impurity bands are the primary reasons of the non-uniform dopant-distributions in smaller nanowires. Being firmly connected to the recent experimental study (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 2009, 106, 15254-15258), this work establishes the first theoretical framework for understanding dopant-distributions in over-10 nm highly doped silicon nanowires.