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Spatially resolved Hall effect measurement in a single semiconductor nanowire

Nature Nanotechnology volume 7, pages 718–722 (2012)Cite this article

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Abstract

Efficient light-emitting diodes and photovoltaic energy-harvesting devices are expected to play an important role in the continued efforts towards sustainable global power consumption. Semiconductor nanowires are promising candidates as the active components of both light-emitting diodes1,2,3,4,5,6 and photovoltaic cells7,8,9,10, primarily due to the added freedom in device design offered by the nanowire geometry. However, for nanowire-based components to move past the proof-of-concept stage and be implemented in production-grade devices, it is necessary to precisely quantify and control fundamental material properties such as doping and carrier mobility. Unfortunately, the nanoscale geometry that makes nanowires interesting for applications also makes them inherently difficult to characterize. Here, we report a method to carry out Hall measurements on single core–shell nanowires. Our technique allows spatially resolved and quantitative determination of the carrier concentration and mobility of the nanowire shell. As Hall measurements have previously been completely unavailable for nanowires, the experimental platform presented here should facilitate the implementation of nanowires in advanced practical devices.

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Figure 1: Device set-up for measuring the Hall effect in single nanowires.
Figure 2: Electrical characterization.
Figure 3: Optical characterization by cathodoluminescence.

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Acknowledgements

This project was performed within the Nanometer Structure Consortium at Lund University (nmC@LU) and with financial support from the Swedish Research Council (VR), the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (SSF), the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation (KAW), VINNOVA, E.ON AG and the Nordic Innovation programme NANORDSUN. The authors thank Ying-Lan Chang, D. Csontos and M. Borgström for discussions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Solid State Physics, the Nanometer Structure Consortium, Lund University, Box 118, S-221 00, Lund, Sweden

    Kristian Storm, Filip Halvardsson, Magnus Heurlin, David Lindgren, Anders Gustafsson, Phillip M. Wu, Bo Monemar & Lars Samuelson

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  1. Kristian Storm
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Contributions

L.S. designed the experiments and supervised the project. K.S. helped design the experiment, carried out simulations, took part in all measurements and wrote the paper. F.H. helped in the design and fabricated the Hall devices and performed the Hall and resistivity measurements. M.H. developed and grew the epitaxial nanowires. D.L. and A.G. performed the cathodoluminescence measurements. P.W. and B.M. took part in data interpretation and discussions.

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Correspondence to Lars Samuelson.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Storm, K., Halvardsson, F., Heurlin, M. et al. Spatially resolved Hall effect measurement in a single semiconductor nanowire. Nature Nanotech 7, 718–722 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2012.190

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