Contact resistance of epitaxially interfaced bridged silicon nanowires

Single crystal Si nanowires are grown between highly doped prefabricated silicon electrodes in the form of nano bridges. Resistance values extracted from the current-voltage measurements for a large number of the nano-bridges with varying lengths and diameters are used to propose a model which highlights the relative contribution of the contact resistance to the total resistance for nanowire based devices. We estimate the specific contact resistance based on our empirical model to be in the range 3.74times10^-6 - 5.02times10^-6 Omega-cm² for our epitaxially interfaced Si nano-bridges. This value is almost two orders of magnitude lower than that of previously reported contact made to silicon nanowires with an evaporated metal film.