Design and Synthesis of
Diverse Functional Kinked
Nanowire Structures for Nanoelectronic Bioprobes
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Abstract
Functional kinked nanowires (KNWs) represent a new class
of nanowire
building blocks, in which functional devices, for example, nanoscale
field-effect transistors (nanoFETs), are encoded in geometrically
controlled nanowire superstructures during synthesis. The bottom-up
control of both structure and function of KNWs enables construction
of spatially isolated point-like nanoelectronic probes that are especially
useful for monitoring biological systems where finely tuned feature
size and structure are highly desired. Here we present three new types
of functional KNWs including (1) the zero-degree KNW structures with
two parallel heavily doped arms of U-shaped structures with a nanoFET
at the tip of the “U”, (2) series multiplexed functional
KNW integrating multi-nanoFETs along the arm and at the tips of V-shaped
structures, and (3) parallel multiplexed KNWs integrating nanoFETs
at the two tips of W-shaped structures. First, U-shaped KNWs were
synthesized with separations as small as 650 nm between the parallel
arms and used to fabricate three-dimensional nanoFET probes at least
3 times smaller than previous V-shaped designs. In addition, multiple
nanoFETs were encoded during synthesis in one of the arms/tip of V-shaped
and distinct arms/tips of W-shaped KNWs. These new multiplexed KNW
structures were structurally verified by optical and electron microscopy
of dopant-selective etched samples and electrically characterized
using scanning gate microscopy and transport measurements. The facile
design and bottom-up synthesis of these diverse functional KNWs provides
a growing toolbox of building blocks for fabricating highly compact
and multiplexed three-dimensional nanoprobes for applications in life
sciences, including intracellular and deep tissue/cell recordings