Sub-10 nm diameter InGaAs vertical nanowire MOSFETs

We present the first sub-10 nm diameter vertical nanowire transistors of any kind in any semiconductor system. These devices are InGaAs MOSFETs fabricated by a top-down approach using reactive ion etching, alcohol-based digital etch and Ni alloyed contacts. A record I
_on
of 350 μA/μm at I
_off
= 100 nA/μm and V
_dd
= 0.5 V is obtained in a 7 nm diameter device. The same device exhibits a peak transconductance (g
_{m, pk}
) of 1.7 mS/μm and minimal subthreshold swing (S) of 90 mV/dec at V
_ds
= 0.5 V, achieving the highest quality factor (defined as the ratio g
_{m, pk}
/S) of 19 reported in vertical nanowire transistors. Excellent scaling behavior is observed with g
_{m, pk}
and I
_on
increasing as the diameter is shrunk down to 7 nm.