• DOI:10.1126/science.1214319
• Corpus ID: 10873901

Ohm’s Law Survives to the Atomic Scale

@article{Weber2012OhmsLS,
  title={Ohm’s Law Survives to the Atomic Scale},
  author={Bent Weber and Suddhasatta Mahapatra and Hoon Ryu and S. Lee and Andreas Fuhrer and Thilo C. G. Reusch and David Thompson and W. C. T. Lee and Gerhard Klimeck and Lloyd C L Hollenberg and Michelle Yvonne Simmons},
  journal={Science},
  year={2012},
  volume={335},
  pages={64 - 67}
}

• B. Weber, S. Mahapatra, +8 authors M. Simmons
• Published 6 January 2012
• Physics
• Science

Wiring Up Silicon Surfaces One of the challenges in downsizing electronic circuits is maintaining low resistivity of wires, because shrinking their diameter to near atomic dimensions increases interface effects and can decrease the effectiveness of dopants. Weber et al. (p. 64; see the Perspective by Ferry) created nanowires on a silicon surface with the deposition of phosphorus atoms through decomposition of PH3 with a scanning tunneling microscope tip. A brief thermal annealing embedded these nanowires, which varied from 1.5 to 11 nanometers in width, into the silicon surface. Their resistivity was independent of width, and their current-carrying capability was comparable to that of thicker copper interconnects. Nanowires created by embedding phosphorus atoms within silicon exhibit a low, diameter-independent resistivity. As silicon electronics approaches the atomic scale, interconnects and circuitry become comparable in size to the active device components. Maintaining low electrical resistivity at this scale is challenging because of the presence of confining surfaces and interfaces. We report on the fabrication of wires in silicon—only one atom tall and four atoms wide—with exceptionally low resistivity (~0.3 milliohm-centimeters) and the current-carrying capabilities of copper. By embedding phosphorus atoms within a silicon crystal with an average spacing of less than 1 nanometer, we achieved a diameter-independent resistivity, which demonstrates ohmic scaling to the atomic limit. Atomistic tight-binding calculations confirm the metallicity of these atomic-scale wires, which pave the way for single-atom device architectures for both classical and quantum information processing.