Multiple tunnel junctions based nanowire photodetector model for single charge detection

¹ Laboratoire de Microélectronique et Instrumentation (UR/03/13-04), Faculté des Sciences de Monastir, Avenue de l’environnement, Université de Monastir, 5019 Monastir, Tunisia
² Equipe composants électroniques (UR/99/13-22), Institut Préparatoire aux Etudes d’Ingénieurs de Nabeul (IPEIN), Université de Carthage, 8000 Merazka, Nabeul, Tunisia

^a e-mail: samir.chatbouri@yahoo.com

Received: 18 June 2012
Revised: 18 January 2013
Accepted: 3 June 2013
Published online: 5 July 2013

Abstract

In this paper we propose a new silicon nanowire photodetector model based on a single-electron transistor for single charge detection (photo-NWSET). In the first part of this work we present the two blocks of the device structure (reading and detection blocks). The presented model is consisting of two blocks capacitively coupled. The first SET (SET₁) is supposed to read the charge whereas the detection block is represented by the nanowire (NW) system associated to an optical source. We modeled the NW by a series of seven islands separated by eight tunnel junctions (8TJs). In the second part of this work, we investigate the effects of photoexcitation on I_d-V_g curves and we present results obtained on the output (photo-NWSET) characteristics after variation of power illumination and response time.