Large, Tunable Magnetoresistance in Nonmagnetic III-V Nanowires

Magnetoresistance, the modulation of resistance by magnetic fields, has been adopted and continues to evolve in many device applications including hard-disk, memory, and sensors. Magnetoresistance in nonmagnetic semiconductors has recently raised much attention and shows great potential due to its large magnitude that is comparable or even larger than magnetic materials. However, most of the previous work focus on two terminal devices with large dimensions, typically of micrometer scales, which severely limit their performance potential and more importantly, scalability in commercial applications. Here, we investigate magnetoresistance in the impact ionization region in InGaAs nanowires with 20 nm diameter and 40 nm gate length. The deeply scaled dimensions of these nanowires enable high sensibility with less power consumption. Moreover, in these three terminal devices, the magnitude of magnetoresistance can be tuned by the transverse electric field controlled by gate voltage. Large magnetoresistance between 100% at room temperature and 2000% at 4.3 K can be achieved at 2.5 T. These nanoscale devices with large magnetoresistance offer excellent opportunity for future high-density large-scale magneto-electric devices using top-down fabrication approaches, which are compatible with commercial silicon platform.