Nanobridge gate-all-around phototransistors for electro-optical OR gate circuit and frequency doubler applications

We fabricated photosensitive silicon-nanobridge 3-D field-effect-transistors and demonstrated their analog and digital applications. The channels of the transistors were implemented by nanowires, grown and bridged between pairs of silicon electrodes using the vapor-liquid-solid technique. Whilst characteristics of the nanowire transistor such as the inverse sub-threshold slopes, the on-current, and the threshold voltage remained nearly unaffected by illumination, magnitude of the off-current was significantly increased by up to three orders of magnitude with increasing intensity. Such off-current modulation enabled by illumination offers opportunities for applications such as electro-optical OR gate circuit elements and frequency doublers.