Silicon nanowire-based circuit: fabrication, characterization and simulation.

An intense effort in nanofabrication and measurement of silicon nanowire (SiNW) devices has been profounded at INRiM in the last ten years, for different metrological applications ranging from current and voltage standards, quantum electronics, sensing and biosensing. All these activities are currently developed at Nanofacility Piemonte, a Laboratory of Electromagnetism Division, in the Quantum Metrology group, and more recently in cooperation with the Electronics and Telecommunications Department of Politecnico di Torino. The major objectives of my Ph.D. program was the fabrication of silicon nanowires, the electrical characterization of a single NW and the development of a method to simulate its behaviour in a complex electronic circuit. First two objectives were pursued at INRiM, whereas the ``computational'' part was carried out in the Department of Electronics and Telecommunications (DET) at the Politecnico. A protocol of fabrication has been drafted so as to obtain a sample of ordered nanowires with the same geometric and structural properties; this has been possible through the exploitation of the properties of self-assembling nanospheres of polystyrene. These nanowires were manipulated in order to obtain a device that would allow the analysis of the electrical characteristics of a single nanowire. In parallel, it has been provided a Spice method for simulation of electronic circuits that can use data tables from measurements or from literature works, or models tool.