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Raimonds Meija [1] and Gunta Kunakova [1] and Juris Prikulis [1] and Justin M. Varghese [2] and Justin D. Holmes [2] and Donats Erts [1; 3]

Academic Editor: Ilaria Armentano

1, Institute of Chemical Physics, University of Latvia, Raina Blvd. 19, Riga LV-1586, Latvia, lu.lv

2, Centre for Research on Adaptive Nanostructures and Nanodevices, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, tcd.ie

3, Department of Chemistry, University of Latvia, Raina Blvd. 19, Riga LV-1586, Latvia, lu.lv

Received Aug 10, 2017; Revised Nov 4, 2017; Accepted Nov 29, 2017

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

1. Introduction

During the last decade, remarkable attention has been devoted to the applications of semiconductor nanowires in chemical sensor, resistive memory, and other electrical devices [1, 2]. Increased surface to volume ratio of nanowires improves their sensitivity to changes in the surrounding medium, which is useful for chemical sensor applications [3]. For example, Cui et al. demonstrated highly sensitive real-time biological sensors [4]. Peng et al. investigated NO sensing properties of porous silicon nanowires in dry air at room temperature [5]. In addition, resistive switching events have been observed and explained by different mechanisms including space charge limited current [6] and oxygen vacancy model [2, 7]. However, more detailed studies are needed to establish well controlled working principles of these devices and properties, especially of narrow band gap nanostructures, such as Bi2S3 nanowires.

The superior sensing behavior at nanoscale can also affect nonsensing devices, where nanostructures serve as building elements with certain well defined electrical properties. Extreme oxygen sensitivity effect on carbon nanotube resistance was reported [8]. Jie et al. observed considerable impact of the air and humidity on the n-type silicon nanowires and even change in the p-type characteristics [9]. Therefore, sensing properties must be considered to advance the performance for most of the nanowire based applications. For example, exposure of metal oxide nanowire sensors to gaseous molecules can modify the density of oxygen vacancies [10]. On the other hand, drift of these vacancies has been found as one of the basic mechanisms for the memristive devices [2]. Consequently, studies of resistive switching may lead...

 

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