Remarkable room‐temperature magnetoresistance in silicon strip devices

1 Introduction

 

The magnetoresistance (MR) effect is 

the change of material resistance caused by an applied 

magnetic field, which has been extensively applied in sen-

sors [1], magnetic memories [2], and logic devices [3]. 

Systems based on MR have high potential of applications 

in some modern technologies such as frequency synthesiz-

ers [4] and microwave detectors [5]. In recent years, MR in 

non-magnetic materials has been attracting more attention. 

In contrast to magnetic materials, non-magnetic materials 

exhibit larger MRs [6, 7] and the resistivity shows an ap-

proximately linearly increase with the external magnetic 

field.  

Among these non-magnetic materials, silicon (Si) at-

tracts more attention [8–17] because of its great compati-

bility with the current CMOS technology and low cost [14]. 

Large MR ratios of over 10,000% can be realized in Si at a 

low temperature of 4 K [15]. A 1000% MR ratio in Si has 

been observed at an applied voltage of more than 70 V [16]. 

A room-temperature MR ratio of 180% can already be 

achieved for Si in a strong magnetic field of 40 T at a bias 

voltage of 1.0 V [17]. However, reports of remarkable 

room-temperature MRs in Si at a moderate operation con-

dition, i.e., low applied voltage and relatively weak mag-

netic field, are still lacking.  

In this paper, we investigate the room-temperature MR 

effect of Si strip devices, which are already employed for 

particle detection in high-energy physics collision experi-

ments [18]. A room-temperature MR ratio of 

∼

400% is re-

alized at the applied voltage of 1.0 V and magnetic field of 

0.8 T using a one-top-contact measuring configuration. 

Moreover, MR saturation is observed with this measuring 

configuration for a given applied voltage as the magnetic 

field increases. However, no MR saturation is observed in 

the ten-top-contact measurement and the MR ratio is only 

∼

155% even at the magnetic field of 1.2 T and applied 

voltage of 1.0 V. 

 

2 Experiments

 The Si strip devices are fabricated on 

300 

μ

m thick n-type Si wafers. In this study, lightly doped 

Si wafers with a carrier density of 1.0 

×

 10

12

 cm

–3

 are em- 

In this paper, we report remarkable room-temperature magne-

toresistance (MR) in silicon strip devices. Saturating and non-

saturating MRs can be realized based on the measuring con-

figurations with one top contact and ten top contacts, respec-

tively. Using the one-top-contact measurement, a saturating

MR ratio of 

∼

400% is obtained at an applied voltage of only

1.0 V when the magnetic field is larger than 0.8 T. While the

  non-saturating MR is achieved in the ten-top-contact meas-

urement and the MR ratio is only 

∼

155% for the 1.0 V ap-

plied voltage even under the magnetic field of 1.2 T. The dif-

ferences for MR ratio values and change trends in these two

measuring configurations are attributed to the enhanced Hall

electric field with the increase of the top contact number. 

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2 

H. Guo et al.: Remarkable RT magnetoresistance in silicon strip devices 

 

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