Heavily Boron-Doped Silicon Layer for the Fabrication of Nanoscale Thermoelectric Devices

Nanomaterials

Zhe Ma¹  Qing Liu¹  An Ji¹  Lingxiao Deng¹  Mingliang Zhang¹  Fuhua Yang¹  Shuyuan Zhang¹  Jing Ma¹  Yang Liu¹  Peishuai Song¹  Xiaodong Wang¹ 

[1]Engineering Research Center for Semiconductor Integrated Technology, Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100083, China

关键词: heavily boron-doped silicon layer;    boron etch-stop;    thermoelectric;    silicon nanowire;    ZT;    nanostructures;   

DOI  :  10.3390/nano8020077

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Heavily boron-doped silicon layers and boron etch-stop techniques have been widely used in the fabrication of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). This paper provides an introduction to the fabrication process of nanoscale silicon thermoelectric devices. Low-dimensional structures such as silicon nanowire (SiNW) have been considered as a promising alternative for thermoelectric applications in order to achieve a higher thermoelectric figure of merit (ZT) than bulk silicon. Here, heavily boron-doped silicon layers and boron etch-stop processes for the fabrication of suspended SiNWs will be discussed in detail, including boron diffusion, electron beam lithography, inductively coupled plasma (ICP) etching and tetramethylammonium hydroxide (TMAH) etch-stop processes. A 7 μm long nanowire structure with a height of 280 nm and a width of 55 nm was achieved, indicating that the proposed technique is useful for nanoscale fabrication. Furthermore, a SiNW thermoelectric device has also been demonstrated, and its performance shows an obvious reduction in thermal conductivity.

【 授权许可】

Unknown