Single Suspended Silicon Nanowire Fabrication With Ultra-Deep Trench Etching

For the last 60 years, a dramatic downscaling of electronics has taken place. This trend of miniaturization has gained the support of the industry and the roadmap for downscaling and introducing new technologies in the semiconductor industry has been well laid out for the next ten years. From the history of the semiconductor industry, it is clear that only those technologies that can be integrated and scaled up for large hierarchical systems will survive and have an impact. Accordingly, the novel technique of nanowire-based one-dimensional electronics has been studied heavily. Nano Electromechanical Systems (NEMS) represent the next level of miniaturization, where semiconductor nanowires are of special interest for ultra-reduced device dimensions. Main reason for using semiconductor nanowires, especially silicon, in NEMS is the ability for integration with higher-order structures. In this work, the question of fabricating a single nanowire within a thick device layer is addressed, where the nanowire represents the functional unit of a larger system, which is fabricated monolithically on the same substrate