Potential Applications of Silicon-Surface Dangling- Bond defects in Nanoelectronic Circuits

Dangling bond has been known as a defect in semiconductor technologies and electronic circuits. However, within the past few years, dangling bond has changed its negative role and turned to a useful entity for design and construction of devices at the atomic level. With the recent developments in fabrication of nanotools, such as scanning tunneling microscope, it is now possible to create or annihilate dangling bonds on demand, and to manipulate them at will, in order to make nano- and sub- nanoscale wires, logical gates, electrical circuits, and other nanodevices. In this paper, the aim is to introduce some of the impressive experimental works that have been done in this respect. Among semiconductors, we narrow our attention to hydrogen terminated silicon (۱۰۰)-۲x۱ surface, because silicon is a widely-used material in semiconductor technology and the corresponding surface is a promising platform for fabricating atomic-scale devices. In this work, first the desired silicon surface is introduced. Then, structural and electrical properties of dangling bonds are briefly explained. Finally, some of the interesting research works, in this area of research, are presented. With the current experimental achievements in the atomic level, we can expect smaller, but more capable nanoelectronic devices in the near future.

Keywords:

Dangling bonds , H-Si (۱۰۰)-۲x۱ surface , nanoelectronics , scanning tunneling microscope , DB atomic wire , DB-made logic gates