Fabrication of silicon quantum wires and dots

Fabrication methods of novel silicon quantum wires and dots using anisotropic wet chemical etching and thermal oxidation are newly proposed. The method realizes fine Si quantum wires, which are fully surrounded by the thermal SiO₂ without any defects. The wires are straight and the Si/SiO₂ interfaces are fairly flat. The 10 nm width wires are confirmed by Transmitting Scanning Microscopy observation in minimum size. The fine quantum dots are also fabricated using this method. The characteristics of the wires are investigated and the current oscillations in variation with the gate voltage are observed in low temperature. We believe the origin of these oscillations arise from one-dimensional subband conduction.