Top down fabricated silicon nanowire networks for thermoelectric applications

A top down process for the reliable fabrication of very complex, large area (order of millimeter square), nets of well organized and connected silicon nanowires (SiNWs) is shown and discussed. It will be shown that these nets are equivalent to the parallel of many very narrow, millimeter long, silicon nanowires, that can be employed either for the fabrication of high efficiency thermoelectric generators or for nanosensing devices.The high reliability with respect to nanowire failure and the high tolerance with respect to silicon nanowire width dispersion are demonstrated by means of numerical simulations. Electrical measurements are reported and compared with numerical simulations, in order to confirm both the equivalence of the net to the parallel of millimeters long SiNWs and its high tolerance with respect to nanowire failure.

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► Top down fabricated large area silicon nanowire (SiNW) networks are presented.
► The networks are electrically and thermally equivalent to millimeters long SiNWs.
► Nanonet tolerance to SiNW failure is much higher than very long independent SiNWs.
► The net is robust with respect to SiNWs width dispersion.
► SiNW nets can be applied to high efficiency thermoelectric conversion.