Piezoresistance in silicon and its nanostructures

Abstract

Abstract

Metallic nanoparticle-based strain sensors elaborated by atomic layer deposition

“…1 For the last ten years, the research on piezoresistive transducers has mainly been focused on the use of nanomaterials to optimize sensitivity, power consumption, and sensor miniaturization. For instance, Si nanowires, [2][3][4] carbon nanotubes, [5][6][7] graphene, [8][9][10] MoS 2 , 10 SiC nanoribbons, 11 Ag nanowires, 12 and metallic nanoparticle (NP) assemblies [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20] have been exploited at the laboratory scale to achieve very large gauge factors (GFs) which rival the state-of-the-art bulk Si gauges. Although the use of nanomaterials has attracted a lot of attention in the literature these past few years, many technological obstacles (manipulation of individual nanostructures, complexity of the process, sensor reproducibility, etc.)…”

Piezoresistive effect in p-type 3C-SiC at high temperatures characterized using Joule heating

“…Additionally, in industries involving fuel combustion such as aerospace and automotive systems, temperature and pressure sensors are vital devices in the feedback control to enhance the performance of engines56. Among various technologies utilized in mechanical sensors, the piezoresistive effect has several advantages, such as device miniaturization, low power consumption, and simple read out circuits7891011. The piezoresistance of silicon (Si) has been deployed in a large number of applications, including inertia12, pressure13, tactile14, and chemical/bio sensors1516 owing to its large gauge factor, worldwide availability and mature fabrication technologies.…”

Nano strain-amplifier: Making ultra-sensitive piezoresistance in nanowires possible without the need of quantum and surface charge effects

“…Among several methods to detect strain, the piezoresistive effect in semiconductors has been widely adopted due to its high sensitivity and simple readout circuitry [7][8][9][10] . Recent studies have been focusing on enhancing the sensitivity of piezoresistive strain sensors by down-scaling piezoresistive elements to a nanometer scale 11 . He and Yang reported a giant longitudinal piezoresistive coefficient of −3550 × 10 −11 Pa −1 in silicon nanowires, which is at least one order of magnitude large than that of bulk Si material 12 .…”

“…Although, theoretical calculation showed a giant piezoresistive effect in nanowires, to make the quantum confinement effective, the diameter of nanowires has to be below a few nanometers, which is relatively challenging to fabricate. Therefore, to date, the existence of the large piezoresistive effect in nanowires using electrical approaches is still a controversial topic, and further studies need to be carried out to verify these methods 11 . In this paper, we report a revolutionary mechanical approach to enhance the sensitivity of piezoresistive strain sensors using a nanowire-based strain amplifying structure (hereafter nano strain-amplifier).…”