Air-Stable All-Inorganic Nanocrystal Solar Cells Processed from

Solution
Ilan Gur et al.
Science 310, 462 (2005);
DOI: 10.1126/science.1117908

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 REPORTS
CORRECTED 9 DECEMBER 2005; SEE LAST PAGE

full-sun illumination are presented in Fig. 2B.

Air-Stable All-Inorganic The device exhibits strong photoresponse
and diode rectification in the dark and light.
In addition, this representative cell exhibits a
Nanocrystal Solar Cells Processed notable PV effect, with a short-circuit
current (Isc ) of 0.58 mA/cm2, open-circuit
from Solution voltage (Voc ) of 0.41 V, and fill factor (FF )
of 0.40 (21).
Ilan Gur,1,3 Neil A. Fromer,1 Michael L. Geier,3 We can distinguish the solar cells pre-
A. Paul Alivisatos1,2* sented here from conventional thin film hetero-
junction cells. Conventional cells depend on a
We introduce an ultrathin donor-acceptor solar cell composed entirely of junction between bulk p- and n- doped ma-
inorganic nanocrystals spin-cast from solution. These devices are stable in air, terials to form a built-in field, which then acts
and post-fabrication processing allows for power conversion efficiencies as the primary driving force for minority
approaching 3% in initial tests. This demonstration elucidates a class of carrier extraction (22, 23). Similar to organic
photovoltaic devices with potential for stable, low-cost power generation. semiconductors, colloidal NCs are character-

Downloaded from www.sciencemag.org on August 26, 2012

ized by extremely limited free-carrier concen-
Organic materials offer strong potential for ponent (5, 10–14). However, studies of type trations (4). In fact, three-dimensional CdSe
cost reduction vis-(-vis conventional solar II semiconductor NC heterostructures show colloid arrays have been found to contain es-
cells, but their spectrally limited absorption that efficient charge transfer may also occur sentially no free carriers without illumination
and low carrier mobilities impose limitations between two such inorganic components with (18). As such, the creation of a depleted junc-
on achieving commercially viable device ef- staggered energy levels (15, 16). In addition, tion in these NC cells is highly unlikely.
ficiencies (1). Colloidal inorganic nanocrys- recent research has revealed a growing number In accordance with these prior studies, the
tals share all of the primary advantages of of similarities between NC films and organic CdSe and CdTe films presented here are
organics—scalable and controlled synthesis, molecular semiconductors. Like organic sys- electrically insulating in the dark. Measuring
an ability to be processed in solution, and a tems, NC films exhibit extremely low carrier surface conduction across a 1-mm gap be-
decreased sensitivity to substitutional doping— concentrations and high trap densities (17, 18), tween two aluminum electrodes yields linear
while retaining the broadband absorption and as well as confined excitations that may mi- IV curves, from which sheet resistances ex-
superior transport properties of traditional grate between crystals (19). All of these prop- ceeding 500 G-ohms per square, a value
photovoltaic (PV) semiconductors (2–4). erties are sufficient, and some are requisite,
Using inorganic nanocrystals (NCs) for elec- for solar energy conversion based on the D-
tron transport can enhance the performance of A model (7, 9).
semiconductor polymer solar cells (5, 6), but The PV devices described here use rod-
the ultimate limitations of these hybrid sys- shaped CdSe (Fig. 1A) and CdTe (Fig. 1B)
tems may still be dictated by the low mobility NCs that we synthesized and prepared
and environmental sensitivity of their organic separately (20). A schematic energy diagram
phase. A solar cell that relies exclusively on (Fig. 1C) illustrates the staggered band
colloidal NCs has been anticipated theoreti- alignment of this prototypical D-A pair. In
cally in recent years (7, 8). We now demon- fabricating devices, NCs were spin-cast from
strate such a device and present a mechanism a filtered pyridine solution, which created
for its operation in the context of organic ultrathin, flexible films of densely packed
donor-acceptor (D-A) and conventional p-n NCs on virtually any substrate. Typical films
junction solar cells. are homogeneous and pinhole-free over large
A well-accepted model has emerged that areas (Fig. 1D).
describes the operation of organic-based solar We fabricated planar D-A heterojunctions
cells relative to their conventional inorganic by sequentially spin-casting films of CdTe and
counterparts (7, 9). The organic D-A solar then CdSe on indium tin oxide (ITO) glass
Fig. 1. Transmission electron micrographs of (A)
cell relies on a type II heterojunction, which coated with 2 ) alumina. Thermally deposited CdSe and (B) CdTe NCs used in this investiga-
serves to dissociate the strongly bound ex- aluminum was used as a reflective top contact. tion. Scale bar, 40 nm. (C) An energy diagram of
citons characteristic of organic systems. Brief annealing of the CdTe film for 15 min at valence and conduction band levels for CdTe and
Materials design for this type of PV system 200-C removed residual solvent and allowed CdSe illustrates the type II charge-transfer
thus requires proper energy band alignment for subsequent deposition of the CdSe film. In junction formed between the two materials.
Employing the effective mass approximation,
of active materials to facilitate charge trans- this way, high-quality bilayer structures were
bulk energy levels were modified to account for
fer. Examples to date have been limited to formed with minimal intermixing at the in- quantum confinement. Valence band edges for
systems with at least one active organic com- terface (20). CdSe and CdTe rods were calculated to be –4.79
The photoaction spectrum of a typical eV and –4.12 eV, respectively. Conduction band
1
Materials Science Division, Lawrence Berkeley Na- bilayer cell (Fig. 2A) reveals features from edges for CdSe and CdTe rods were calculated to
tional Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA. 2Depart- be –6.64 eV and –5.85 eV, respectively. (D) A
ment of Chemistry, 3Department of Materials Science
both the CdSe and CdTe absorption spectra.
typical spin-cast film of colloidal NCs imaged by
and Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, Thus, both components contribute to the
scanning electron micrography is homogeneous
CA 94720, USA. photocurrent. Current-voltage (I-V) charac- and defect-free; the film edge of this È100-nm
*To whom correspondence should be addressed. teristics of this device in the dark and at film is shown for contrast with the silicon
E-mail: alivis@berkeley.edu simulated Air Mass 1.5 Global (AM1.5G) substrate. Scale bar, 1 mm.

462 21 OCTOBER 2005 VOL 310 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org

 REPORTS
limited by the measurement apparatus, can be conductivity. Sheet resistances, now measur- nitude enhancement in conductivity of the
extracted for films of either material on glass able, dropped at least one order of magnitude device itself (Fig. 2B). This strong pho-
substrates. Exposing the films to 100 mW/cm2 under illumination. Likewise, illumination toconductive effect suggests that these ma-
full-sun irradiation effected a marked rise in afforded a greater than three orders of mag- terials, like their organic counterparts, have an
extremely limited number of untrapped car-
riers in the dark and are better characterized by
a rigid band model than by one that employs
band bending.
Accounting for these effectively undoped
active materials, we propose a mechanism for
PV conversion based on donor-acceptor charge
transfer. Those photoexcitations that probe the
CdTe/CdSe junction experience an energetic
driving force for charge transfer, with holes
finding lower energy states in the CdTe and
electrons finding lower states in the CdSe.
Carrier extraction is driven not by means of a
built-in field created from a depletion region of
substitutional dopants; rather, extraction is

Downloaded from www.sciencemag.org on August 26, 2012

primarily driven by directed diffusion, as
dictated by the type II heterojunction (7, 9).
After absorption and charge transfer, majority
holes in the CdTe readily diffused into the ITO
but were blocked from moving through the
CdSe toward the Al electrode. Likewise,
majority electrons in the CdSe can diffuse only
toward the Al, and not through the CdTe to the
ITO. The well-accepted metal-insulator-metal
model, in which electrodes of disparate work
functions equilibrate to form a field across the
dielectric active materials, likely provides an
additional driving force for carrier extraction.
Fig. 2. (A) The normalized photocurrent spectral response of a typical ITO/100-nm CdTe/100-nm In order to assess the role of charge transfer
CdSe/Al bilayer device (bold) is illustrated alongside solution-phase absorption spectra for the in facilitating PV energy conversion, devices
CdTe (dotted) and CdSe (solid) NCs from which the device was fabricated. The photoaction composed of a thin film of only one NC ma-
spectrum reflects the red CdTe absorption edge and the prominent CdSe exciton peak, indicating terial were juxtaposed with cells containing
that both components are active. a.u., arbitrary units. (B) I-V characteristics for this device in the charge transfer junctions between the two types
dark (dotted) and under simulated one-sun AM1.5G illumination (solid). The device behaves as a
rectifying diode with a notable photovoltaic response. The strong photoconductive response of the of crystals. All devices had comparable thick-
device is also illustrated. (C) A comparison of external quantum efficiency spectra collected under nesses of active materials on the order of 200
low-intensity illumination (È5
10j2 mW/cm2). We see significant enhancement in bilayer nm and comparable optical densities across the
(bold, solid) and blend (bold, dotted) devices versus a CdTe single-material device (solid) and a spectrum. A direct comparison of external
CdSe single-material device (dotted), all of comparable optical density. The comparison serves quantum efficiencies in the CdTe-only, CdSe-
to illustrate the role of charge transfer in photocurrent generation. (D) A comparison of I-V only, and bilayer CdTe/CdSe devices (Fig. 2C)
characteristics between the set of devices in (C) under simulated AM1.5G illumination. Nearly
symmetric I-V behavior in the single-material devices suggests that diode behavior in the bilayer is shows a significant enhancement in creation
not simply the result of a Schottky junction with either material. With no contact selectivity, blend and extraction of carriers due solely to the
cells show negligible rectification and photovoltage. presence of a charge transfer interface within
the device. As is the case in organic systems,
separation of electrons and holes across the
interface enhances the diffusional driving
force for charge extraction while reducing
the likelihood of exciton recombination. De-
vices composed of intimately mixed blends of
CdSe and CdTe nanocrystals similarly exhibit
enhanced quantum efficiencies over single-
material cells (Fig. 2C), offering further evi-
dence that the photoaction of these devices is
based on a D-A junction rather than a con-
ventional planar p-n junction.
We also compared the I-V characteristics of
Fig. 3. (A) The normalized photoaction spectrum of a typical bilayer device after sintering reveals these various devices under simulated AM1.5G
the broadened spectral response and enhanced quantum efficiency that result from sintering. (B) I-V illumination. As noted above, cells based on
characteristics of a typical bilayer device before sintering (dotted) and after sintering (solid),
measured at simulated one-sun AM1.5G illumination. The sintered cell shows over an order of
heterojunction bilayers exhibit good diode
magnitude enhancement in photocurrent whereas the open-circuit voltage remains virtually behavior with strong rectification. By compar-
unchanged. (C) The use of a Ca 20-nm/Al 80-nm top contact allows for fabrication of devices with ison, I-V characterization of devices composed
AM1.5G power conversion efficiencies as high as 2.9%. of only CdTe or only CdSe showed no

www.sciencemag.org SCIENCE VOL 310 21 OCTOBER 2005 463

 REPORTS
significant rectification (Fig. 2D) (24). We can NC system. This recombination is com- ments revealed less than 2% degradation in
thus deduce that the observed PV effect in the pounded by the large presence of surface photocurrent after 14 hours at short circuit
bilayer is not a result of Schottky contacts to states on the NCs, which act to trap carriers under simulated AM1.5G illumination with
either material but rather is due to the intended as they move through the film. Indeed, de- no encapsulation. These phenomena serve to
heterojunction. trimental recombination losses are apparent in illustrate the robustness of this system over
Having ruled out the presence of conven- the low quantum efficiency of the NC cell its organic counterparts.
tional p-n or Schottky junctions, it appears that compared with similar devices made from This demonstration introduces solar cells
the bilayer NC cell operates by means of the organic semiconductors. based entirely on colloidal semiconductor
diffusion-assisted D-A heterojunction typical We can minimize the high surface trap area nanocrystals. They are ultrathin, solution-
of organic devices. However, several charac- inherent in a densely packed array of NCs and processed, and stable in ambient environments.
teristics of the NC solar cell set it apart from its concurrently improve carrier transport in the Composed of dense nanocrystal films that mir-
organic-based counter parts. The most effi- device by annealing and sintering the crystals. ror the basic properties of semiconducting poly-
cient organic solar cells are based on distrib- Following a well-known technique to facilitate mers, these cells function as a class of diffusion-
uted heterojunctions, but devices based on sintering of CdTe thin films (26), we exposed assisted, donor-acceptor heterojunctions.
simple blends of donor and acceptor NCs (Fig. NC films to a saturated solution of CdCl2 in Sintering is found to enhance the performance
2D) neither rectify nor produce a significant methanol and annealed them at 400-C in air of these devices, allowing for air-stable power
photovoltage. In contrast to organic systems, for 15 min. After sintering, films of CdSe and conversion efficiencies up to 2.9%. The nano-
common electrodes do not readily form se- CdTe remain insulating in the dark but show crystal solar cells presented here offer an ex-
lective contacts to either the donor or ac- about two orders of magnitude enhancement citing research direction and serve as a key

Downloaded from www.sciencemag.org on August 26, 2012

ceptor NCs. Electrons and holes can be in photoconductivity. The sintering process development toward achieving stable and low-
injected into either material, such that blend markedly improves carrier transport but does cost solar energy conversion.
cells pass current in both forward and reverse not appear to result in significant doping.
bias. Incorporation of blocking layers in fu- The photoresponse of sintered CdTe/CdSe References and Notes
ture cell designs may allow for further in- bilayer cells mirrors the drastic rise in photo- 1. S. E. Shaheen, D. S. Ginley, G. E. Jabbour, MRS Bull.
30, 10 (2005).
vestigation of the blend system. conductivity exhibited by the active layers. A 2. A. P. Alivisatos, J. Phys. Chem. 100, 13226 (1996).
Another fundamental distinction of the NC typical photoaction spectrum (Fig. 3A) shows 3. C. B. Murray, C. R. Kagan, M. G. Bawendi, Annu. Rev.
system has direct consequences on the per- external quantum efficiencies approaching Mater. Sci. 30, 545 (2000).
formance of these devices. Although a hetero- 70% (27). As expected, the spectrum reflects 4. M. Shim, C. J. Wang, D. J. Norris, P. Guyot-Sionnest,
MRS Bull. 26, 1005 (2001).
junction is nearly always required to efficiently a strong red-shift in the onset of photocurrent 5. W. U. Huynh, J. J. Dittmer, A. P. Alivisatos, Science
produce free charges from excitons in organic to the bulk absorption edge. With Isc of 11.6 295, 2425 (2002).
systems, this is not the case for the NCs used in mA/cm2, Voc of 0.40 V, and FF of 0.45, the 6. B. Q. Sun, H. J. Snaith, A. S. Dhoot, S. Westenhoff, N. C.
Greenham, J. Appl. Phys. 97, 014914 (2005).
this study. Rod-shaped nanocrystals with high resulting solar cell demonstrates a power con- 7. B. A. Gregg, M. C. Hanna, J. Appl. Phys. 93, 3605
aspect ratios exhibit little confinement along version efficiency of 2.1% under simulated (2003).
the length of the rod (25). Excitons can thus AM1.5G illumination (28). The enhancement 8. A. J. Nozik, Phys. E 14, 115 (2002).
9. J. A. Barker, C. M. Ramsdale, N. C. Greenham, Phys.
dissociate over this dimension, creating free in efficiency arises solely from the marked Rev. B 67, 075205 (2003).
carriers throughout the NC film. In organic increase in photoresponse, whereas cells 10. J. J. M. Halls et al., Nature 376, 498 (1995).
systems, free carriers are created only when exhibited a nearly unchanged open-circuit volt- 11. G. Yu, J. Gao, J. C. Hummelen, F. Wudl, A. J. Heeger,
Science 270, 1789 (1995).
otherwise tightly bound excitons are separated age after sintering (Fig. 3B). This result is 12. P. Peumans, V. Bulovic, S. R. Forrest, Appl. Phys. Lett.
across the D-A junction. strong evidence that the driving force for 76, 2650 (2000).
With both free electrons and holes residing charge extraction is the same in sintered and 13. S. E. Shaheen et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 78, 841 (2001).
14. K. M. Coakley, M. D. McGehee, Appl. Phys. Lett. 83,
in the donor and acceptor materials, carriers unsintered devices. 3380 (2003).
are more susceptible to recombination in the By varying simple system parameters such 15. S. Kim, B. Fisher, H. J. Eisler, M. Bawendi, J. Am.
as electrode material, even higher efficiencies Chem. Soc. 125, 11466 (2003).
have already been achieved in sintered nano- 16. D. J. Milliron et al., Nature 430, 190 (2004).
17. D. S. Ginger, N. C. Greenham, J. Appl. Phys. 87, 1361
crystal cells. Figure 3C shows I-V character- (2000).
istics for the best device fabricated to date, 18. N. Y. Morgan et al., Phys. Rev. B 66, 075339 (2002).
which employs a Ca top contact capped with 19. J. Heitmann et al., Phys. Rev. B 69, 195309 (2004).
20. Materials and methods are available as supporting
Al. This cell has an AM1.5G power conversion material on Science Online.
efficiency of 2.9%, with Isc of 13.2 mA/cm2, 21. Results presented are based on devices that use the
Voc of 0.45 V, and FF of 0.49. standardized syntheses of CdTe and CdSe described
above. Other syntheses have yielded slightly differ-
None of the solar cells presented here, ent results. For instance, devices with open-circuit
whether sintered or not, exhibited the strong voltages as high as 0.6 have been achieved by
sensitivity to photo-oxidation characteristic of varying NC diameter; a thorough description of this
dependence will be described elsewhere.
organic-based devices; in fact, aging seems to 22. S. M. Sze, Physics of Semiconductor Devices (Wiley,
improve rather than deteriorate their perform- New York, 1981).
ance. Figure 4 shows the AM1.5G full-sun 23. A. L. Fahrenbruch, R. H. Bube, Fundamentals of Solar
Cells (Academic Press, New York, 1983).
behavior of a typical sintered device charac- 24. Devices composed of intimately mixed blends of
Fig. 4. I-V behavior at simulated one-sun terized in air before and after 13,000 hours_ CdSe and CdTe NCs show lower short-circuit
AM1.5G illumination for a typical sintered bilayer open-circuit exposure to ambient atmosphere currents than bilayer devices, despite comparable
device upon first exposure to air (solid) and after external quantum efficiencies (Fig. 2C). This can be
and lighting. The cell shows only a 1.4% attributed to the difference in illumination con-
13,000 hours of exposure to ambient atmo- decrease in short-circuit current, whereas the
sphere and light at open circuit. Idle exposure to ditions between these two measurements. Because
air and ambient light results in minimal degra- fill factor rose 4.4% and the open-circuit of instrument limitations, spectral response curves
voltage increased by more than 10%. Overall, were measured at nearly four orders of magnitude
dation of photocurrent and ultimately affords a lower illumination intensity than the simulated 100-
13.6% improvement in overall power conversion the atmospheric aging resulted in a 13.6% mW/cm2 AM1.5G conditions used in I-V compar-
efficiency. increase in efficiency. Light-soaking experi- isons. Increased leakage and recombination in the

464 21 OCTOBER 2005 VOL 310 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org

 REPORTS
blend devices are likely responsible for this discrep- 28. Short-circuit currents obtained under simulated AM1.5G Science Foundation for support under a Graduate
ancy, but further investigation is needed to fully illumination were well matched with those obtained by Research Fellowship. Dedicated in loving memory to
understand this effect. integrating external quantum efficiency data with the Benjamin Boussert, Giulia Adesso, and Jason Choy.
25. L. S. Li, J. T. Hu, W. D. Yang, A. P. Alivisatos, Nano true AM1.5G solar emission spectrum (20).
Lett. 1, 349 (2001). 29. We thank A. Radenovic, K. Sivula, U. Bach, D. Supporting Online Material
26. B. E. McCandless, L. V. Moulton, R. W. Birkmire, Prog. Milliron, J. Wang, and S. Laubach for research www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/310/5747/462/
Photovoltaics 5, 249 (1997). support and valuable discussion. Supported by the DC1
27. These ultrathin cells exhibit suboptimal absorptivity, Director, Office of Energy Research, Office of Materials and Methods
with average optical density of È0.7. This assumes Science, Division of Materials Sciences, of the U.S.
full back contact reflection such that incident light Department of Energy under contract no. DE-AC02- 25 July 2005; accepted 20 September 2005
passes through the film twice. 05CH11231. I.G. further acknowledges the National 10.1126/science.1117908

Bridging Dimensions: nanowires have been realized experimentally

(15–17 ), and Lieber_s group has used them to
demonstrate a demultiplexer that bridges fabri-
Demultiplexing Ultrahigh-Density cation methods (i.e., self-assembly versus
lithographic patterning) but not length scales
Nanowire Circuits (18). Both schemes are based on placing con-
trollable regions on the surface of the nano-
Robert Beckman, Ezekiel Johnston-Halperin, Yi Luo, wires. An individual nanowire, which is
Jonathan E. Green, James R. Heath* initially in the nonconducting state, will con-

Downloaded from www.sciencemag.org on August 26, 2012

duct only when all of the control regions are
A demultiplexer is an electronic circuit designed to separate two or more field- or voltage-addressed; that is, it is the
combined signals. We report on a demultiplexer architecture for bridging from logical equivalent of a multi-input AND gate.
the submicrometer dimensions of lithographic patterning to the nanometer- Here, we describe an electric field effect–
scale dimensions that can be achieved through nanofabrication methods for based demultiplexing scheme that is tolerant of
the selective addressing of ultrahigh-density nanowire circuits. Order log2(N) manufacturing defects, is not seriously limited
large wires are required to address N nanowires, and the demultiplexer archi- in terms of the wire size and pitch of the de-
tecture is tolerant of low-precision manufacturing. This concept is experi- multiplexer structure, and uses 2Elog2(N)^ þ R
mentally demonstrated on submicrometer wires and on an array of 150 microwires to address N nanowires, where R
silicon nanowires patterned at nanowire widths of 13 nanometers and a pitch (for redundant address lines) is zero or a small
of 34 nanometers. integer (14). This scheme does not require
control over the axial doping profile of the
One of the central challenges of nanotechnol- the architecture should allow for the addressing underlying nanowires but can take advantage
ogy is the selective addressing of and interac- of many nanowires with a few large wires. Third, of readily achieved vertical doping profiles,
tion with individual nanostructures at high the manufacture of the demultiplexer should be and it is designed to bridge length scales. It is
densities (i.e., densities limited only by the in- tolerant of fabrication defects. optimized (i.e., R is small) for nanowires for
trinsic size and packing of the nanostructures). Proposed demultiplexer architectures (10, 11) which the pitch and width of the nanowire
Specifically, this challenge manifests over a have been based on combining crossbars (12) array are precisely controlled. The scheme is
range of problems, including coupling of con- (lithographically patterned demultiplexing ad- based on NOR logic; that is, the only nanowire
ventional electronics to novel nanoelectronic dress wires crossing the nanowires) with multi- that is not field-addressed is the one selected.
devices (1), addressing of single nanoparticles input binary tree demultiplexers (13). Binary We first illustrate the feasibility of this concept
for applications in quantum computing (2), trees, by their very nature, exhibit order by demultiplexing an array of Si wires 200 nm
and construction of high-density biomolecular 2Elog2(N)^ scaling, where N is the number of wide, patterned at a pitch of 1 mm. We then
sensor (3, 4) circuits. For nanoelectronics, this nanowires and 2Elog2(N)^ is the number of the extend this approach to demultiplexing an ar-
challenge relates to the ability to address cir- large demultiplexing wires used to address the ray of 150 nanowires at a pitch of 34 nm with
cuits that have characteristic wire dimensions nanowires. Nanowire assemblies are often individual wire widths of 13 nm. Finally, we
and pitches that are smaller than the resolution characterized by some randomness in organi- identify specific materials development path-
achievable through lithographic patterning. zation, as well as by defects such as broken or ways that should allow the full and robust
Several groups have reported on methods for nonconducting nanowires. To compensate, the realization of this architecture.
fabricating ultrahigh-density nanowire arrays proposed schemes contain a certain amount of The multiplexer concept is shown in Fig. 1.
(4–9). redundancy (extra wires). The major cost of this Here, 25 (0 32) nanowires are addressed with
Architectural concepts for meeting the chal- redundancy is that the use of additional address five pairs of (drawn) large wires. Note that the
lenge of electrically addressing (demultiplexing) wires implies that certain nanowire addresses binary tree pattern extends above and below
individual nanowires that are patterned at will be redundant or nonactive; circuit testing the nanowire array. This eases the vertical
sublithographic densities should satisfy three must then be carried out to determine the good alignment requirements: As long as the multi-
criteria. First, the demultiplexer architecture addresses, and memory must be devoted to stor- plexer pattern is oriented perpendicular to the
must bridge from the micrometer or submicro- ing those addresses (14). Kuekes and Williams nanowire array and the nanowire pitch and width
meter dimensions achievable through lithogra- (10) described a diode- or resistor-based dimensions are well defined, the circuit will
phy to the few-nanometer dimensions achievable decoder that uses 5Elog2(N)^ large microscale function (14). This aspect of the architecture
through alternative patterning methods. Second, address wires crossing an array of N nanowires. makes it particularly amenable to patterning
DeHon et al. (11) described an architecture that methods such as nanoimprint molding (19, 20).
Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering,
uses no more than 2.2Elog2(N)^ þ 11 address The major cost associated with giving up
California Institute of Technology, MC 127-72, 1200 wires. Their scheme is based on the field-effect vertical alignment precision is the knowledge
East California Boulevard, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA. gating of nanowires by the demultiplexer, and it of exactly which nanowire is selected by a
*To whom correspondence should be addressed. requires control over the doping profile along given input address. For example, the binary
E-mail: heath@caltech.edu the axial dimension of the nanowires. Such address B1 0 1 0 1[ used in Fig. 1 corresponds

www.sciencemag.org SCIENCE VOL 310 21 OCTOBER 2005 465

C O R R E C T I O N S A N D C L A R I F I C AT I O N S

ERRATUM post date 9 December 2005

Reports: “Air-stable all-inorganic nanocrystal solar cells processed from solu-

tion” by I. Gur et al. (21 Oct. 2005, p. 462). On page 464, in two places, it is
mentioned that an aging experiment was carried out for 13,000 hours. These
instances should read ~13,000 minutes. These errors occur in line 4 of the Fig.
4 caption and in column 2, fourth paragraph, line 8.

Downloaded from www.sciencemag.org on August 26, 2012

www.sciencemag.org SCIENCE Erratum post date 9 DECEMBER 2005 1