Gate-controlled heat generation in ZnO nanowire FETs

Andrea Pescaglini, Subhajit Biswas, Davide Cammi, Carsten Ronning, Justin D. Holmes, Daniela Iacopino

Nanoscale heating production using nanowires has been shown to be particularly attractive for a number of applications including nanostructure growth, localized doping, transparent heating and sensing. However, all proof-of-concept devices proposed so far relied on the use of highly conductive nanomaterials, typically metals or highly doped semiconductors. In this article, we demonstrate a novel nanoheater architecture based on a single semiconductor nanowire field-effect transistor (NW-FET). Nominally undoped ZnO nanowires were incorporated into three-terminal devices whereby control of the nanowire temperature at a given source-drain bias was achieved by additional charge carriers capacitatively induced via the third gate electrode. Joule-heating selective ablation of poly(methyl methacrylate) deposited on ZnO nanowires was shown, demonstrating the ability of the proposed NW-FET configuration to enhance by more than one order of magnitude the temperature of a ZnO nanowire, compared to traditional two-terminal configurations. These findings demonstrate the potential of field-effect architectures to improve Joule heating power in nanowires, thus vastly expanding the range of suitable materials and applications for nanowire-based nanoheaters.