Abstract
We propose a novel concept, namely, shell-doping of nanowires, for control of carrier mobility in nanowires. Different from traditional doping,
where dopant atoms are distributed uniformly inside nanowires, shell-doping spatially confines dopant atoms within a few atomic layers in the
shell region of a nanowire. Our numerical results based on the Anderson model of electronic disorder show that electrons in a shell-doped
nanowire exhibit a peculiar behavior very different from that of uniformly doped nanowires. Beyond some critical doping, electron dynamics
in a shell-doped nanowire undergoes a localization/quasi-delocalization transition, namely, the electron diffusion length decreases in the
regime of weak disorder but increases in the regime of strong disorder. This transition is a result of the existence of quasi-mobility-edges in
the energy spectrum of the system, which can be exploited experimentally through control of electron concentration, carrier density, and
degree of disorder.
