Abstract
We propose a novel concept, namely, delta-doping of nanowires, to control the carrier mobility
in nanowires. Different from the traditional doping, our approach features doping of a nanowire
only on its surface. Our calculations based on Anderson models for nanowires with surface
disorder showed remarkably different results from the traditional doping where impurities are
distributed inside the nanowire. We found that there exist transition energy levels similar to the
mobility edges in three-dimensional disordered systems. If the Fermi energy is below the
transition energy level, the delta-doped nanowire is simply an insulator. But once the Fermi
energy exceeds this energy level, the carrier mobility increases significantly. The transition
levels are almost independent of the degree of disorder in the regime of strong disorder.
