Customizing electron confinement in plasma-assembled Si/AlN nanodots for solar cell applications

Journal Article · Tue Dec 15 00:00:00 EST 2009 · Physics of Plasmas

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3274467· OSTI ID:21371269

Huang, S Y; Xu, S ^[1]; Arulsamy, A Das ^[2]; Xu, M ^[1]; Cvelbar, U; Mozetic, M ^[3]; Ostrikov, K ^[2]

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1. Plasma Sources and Applications Center, NIE, Nanyang Technological University, 1 Nanyang Walk, 637616 Singapore (Singapore)
2. Plasma Nanoscience Center Australia (PNCA), CSIRO Materials Science and Engineering, Lindfield, New South Wales 2070 (Australia)
3. Jozef Stefan Institute, Jamova 39, SI-1000 Ljubljana (Slovenia)

Size-uniform Si nanodots (NDs) are synthesized on an AlN buffer layer at low Si(111) substrate temperatures using inductively coupled plasma-assisted magnetron sputtering deposition. High-resolution electron microscopy reveals that the sizes of the Si NDs range from 9 to 30 nm. Room-temperature photoluminescence (PL) spectra indicate that the energy peak shifts from 738 to 778 nm with increasing the ND size. In this system, the quantum confinement effect is fairly strong even for relatively large (up to 25 nm in diameter) NDs, which is promising for the development of the next-generation all-Si tandem solar cells capable of effectively capturing sunlight photons with the energies between 1.7 (infrared: large NDs) and 3.4 eV (ultraviolet: small NDs). The strength of the resulting electron confinement in the Si/AlN ND system is evaluated and justified by analyzing the measured PL spectra using the ionization energy theory approximation.

• OSTI ID: 21371269
• Journal Information: Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 16, Issue 12; Other Information: DOI: 10.1063/1.3274467; (c) 2009 American Institute of Physics; ISSN 1070-664X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY
36 MATERIALS SCIENCE
ELECTRON MICROSCOPY
ELECTRONS
MAGNETRONS
PHOTOLUMINESCENCE
PLASMA
PLASMA CONFINEMENT
QUANTUM DOTS
SILICON SOLAR CELLS
SPECTRA
SPUTTERING
CONFINEMENT
DIRECT ENERGY CONVERTERS
ELECTRON TUBES
ELECTRONIC EQUIPMENT
ELEMENTARY PARTICLES
EMISSION
EQUIPMENT
FERMIONS
LEPTONS
LUMINESCENCE
MICROSCOPY
MICROWAVE EQUIPMENT
MICROWAVE TUBES
NANOSTRUCTURES
PHOTOELECTRIC CELLS
PHOTON EMISSION
PHOTOVOLTAIC CELLS
SOLAR CELLS
SOLAR EQUIPMENT