Electronic transport of silicon nanowires grown in porous Al2 O3 membrane

Electronic transport properties of silicon nanowires grown by chemical vapor deposition, embedded in an insulating alumina nanoporous membrane are studied. Transport measurements were performed from 300 to 4.2 K, which revealed a scaling law of the conductance as a function of the temperature and the dc bias voltage, which the authors interpreted as a Coulomb blockade manifestation. Magnetoconductive measurements at low temperature revealed a positive magnetoconductance which can be well fitted by quasi-one-dimensional (quasi-1D) weak localization theory. These results seem to indicate that electron-electron interactions and quasi-1D effect predominate on the electronic transport properties of these systems.