Mechanism behind the switching of current induced by a gate field in a semiconducting nanowire junction

Abstract

We propose a new orbital controlled model to explain the gate field induced switching of current in a semiconducting PbS-nanowire junction. A single particle scattering formalism in conjunction with a posteriori density functional approach involving hybrid functional is used to study the electronic current; both first and higher order Stark effects are explicitly treated in our model. Our calculation reveals that after a threshold gate-voltage, orbital mixing produces p-components at the S atoms in the participating orbitals. This results in an inter-layer orbital interaction that allows electron to delocalize along the channel axis. As a consequence a higher conductance state is found. A similar feature is also found in a PbSe nanowire junction, which suggests that this model can be used universally to explain the gate field induced switching of current in lead-chalcogenide nanowire junctions.