Due to their high mobility, the integration of compound semiconductors on Si has been actively studied over the past several years. This integration, however, presents significant challenges. The conventional method of addressing this problem consists of growth of multiple epilayers of materials to address the lattice mismatch between Si and the desired semiconductor, leading to highly complex fabrication techniques. Here we demonstrate high performance compound semiconductor on insulator (XOI) field effect transistors (FET) consisting of ultra-thin InAs nanoribbons (NR) on insulator that exhibit performance on par with the state of the art quantum well FETs. We have performed a detailed study on the transport properties of these InAs ribbons, showing that quantum confinement plays a significant role in the electron transport properties. In detail, the contact resistance and mobility are heavily affected by the number of sub-bands populated.
Project end date: 08/14/12