Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 5, 2026

Carrier Lifetime Measurements in Semiconductors through the Microwave Photoconductivity Decay Method
Published on: April 18, 2019
Measurement of carrier mobility in silicon nanowires
Oki Gunawan1, Lidija Sekaric, Amlan Majumdar
1IBM Research Division, TJ Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY 10598, USA. ogunawa@us.ibm.com
Abstract:
We report the first direct capacitance measurements of silicon nanowires (SiNWs) and the consequent determination of field carrier mobilities in undoped-channel SiNW field-effect transistors (FETs) at room temperature. We employ a two-FET method for accurate extraction of the intrinsic channel resistance and intrinsic channel capacitance of the SiNWs. The devices used in this study were fabricated using a top-down method to create SiNW FETs with up to 1000 wires in parallel for increasing the raw capacitance while maintaining excellent control on device dimensions and series resistance. We found that, compared with the universal mobility curves for bulk silicon, the electron and hole mobilities in nanowires are comparable to those of the surface orientation that offers a lower mobility.
More Related Videos
Related Concept Videos
Carrier Transport
Drift Current:
The drift of charge carriers is started by an external electric field (E). Charged particles, such as electrons and holes, experience an acceleration between collisions with lattice atoms. For electrons, this results in a drift velocity (vd) given by:
Carrier Generation and Recombination
This process is given by the generation rate G and is efficient due to the conservation of momentum between the valence band maximum and conduction band minimum.
Indirect generation involves an...
Types of Semiconductors

