Hall effect in nanowires

The classical Hall effect in thin semiconductor nanowires with lateral contacts is considered theoretically. Two new phenomena: (i) influence of diffusion currents in nanowires with radius comparable with the screening length of carriers and (ii) eddy currents in non-planar Hall contacts are taken into account. Both effects result in a noticeable reduction of the measured Hall voltage compared with the standard formula for bulk samples and hence the effective carrier concentration determined by using this formula may exceed the real concentration in nanowires in up to two orders of magnitude.