Room-Temperature Operation of Silicon Single-Electron Transistor Fabricated Using Optical Lithography

We report on room-temperature operation of Si nanowires (SiNWs) based single-electron transistors (SETs) fabricated based on the top-down approach using conventional optical lithography. The SETs exhibit strong Coulomb oscillation at room temperature due to extreme small size of SiNW, which has a diameter of 4 nm. The optical lithography approach is attractive compared to the commonly used electron beam lithography for the fabrication of SETs because it offers the possibility of integrating Si single-electron electronics with CMOS technology.