Piezoresistance of top-down suspended Si nanowires

Measurements of the gauge factor of suspended, top-down silicon nanowires are presented. The nanowires are fabricated with a CMOS compatible process and with doping concentrations ranging from 2 × 10²⁰ down to 5 × 10¹⁷ cm ^{- 3}. The extracted gauge factors are compared with results on identical non-suspended nanowires and with state-of-the-art results. An increase of the gauge factor after suspension is demonstrated. For the low doped nanowires a value of 235 is measured. Particular attention was paid throughout the experiments to distinguishing real resistance change due to strain modulation from resistance fluctuations due to charge trapping. Furthermore, a numerical model correlating surface charge density with the gauge factor is presented. Comparison of the simulations with experimental measurements shows the validity of this approach. These results contribute to a deeper understanding of the piezoresistive effect in Si nanowires.