Electromigrated nanogaps: A review on the fabrications and applications

Abstract

Electromigration—a critical failure mode of metal interconnects in integrated circuits—has been exploited for constructing nanometer-sized gaps (or nanogaps, less than a few nanometers) on metallic nanowires. Electromigrated nanogaps have been utilized extensively in the field of nanotechnology and have demonstrated to be an effective platform for electrically accessing small things such as molecules in a device fashion, establishing metal-molecule-metal junctions. These devices allow the study of the electronic transport phenomena through molecules and DNA. Furthermore, electromigrated nanogaps can read out incident electromagnetic fields as an antenna due to the plasmonic excitation on the surface, which is usually maximized in nanogaps. Moreover, structural changes caused by electromigration on metallic nanowires have been leveraged to create single-component resistive switching memories. In this review, we discuss the recent progress and challenges of electromigration methods for a nanogap creation as well as their applications for electronic devices (molecular/DNA devices and resistive switches), thermoelectric energy conversion devices, and photonic devices (nanoantennas).

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Recent progress in single-molecule transistors: their designs, mechanisms and applications

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3 nm Channel MoS2 Transistors by Electromigration of Metal Interconnection

“…Electromigration, a destructive failure mode of metal interconnects in integrated circuits (ICs), is a process of migration of atoms from one region to another through bombardment by accelerated electrons, creating both voids/cracks and hillocks on metals, which can grow and eventually break metal connections, resulting in nanogaps, ranging between less than 1 nm and a few nanometers. − Over the development of the past few decades, electromigrated nanogaps have been vigorously utilized in the area of molecular electronics to establish metal–molecule–metal junctions. − And a reproducible and controllable parallel process for fabricating large numbers of nanogaps in a single process by using a balanced simultaneous process of feedback-controlled electromigration (FBEM) has been demonstrated . Owing to the features of small gap size, simple fabrication process, high stability, and potential large-scale integration with ICs, FBEM is hopeful for further transistor downscaling.…”