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arXiv · 1309.4400

Si nano-VINe: Electrical Percolation in Quantum-Confined nc-Si:SiO2 Systems

Serim Ilday·Hande Ustunel·F. Ömer Ilday·Daniele Toffoli·Gizem Nogay·David Friedrich·René Hübner·Bernd Schmidt·Karl-Heinz Heinig·Rasit Turan
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Abstract

Nanostructures, especially of silicon, are of paramount importance for new generation solar cell applications. The key material requirements for solar cells are good electrical conductivity, confinement of excitons, and a tunable band-gap that allows for tandem arrangements to absorb a maximally large portion of the solar spectrum. However, to date, existing Si-based nanostructures have addressed these requirements individually. The difficulty is that these requirements are entangled in complex ways, so an effort to improve one can lead to a major trade-offs in the others. In this study, we report on a novel silicon nanostructure, where the key advance is that we have managed to satisfy all the abovementioned requirements simultaneously: We demonstrate that the excitons are confined, the bandgap is tunable, and the electrons can freely travel along the nc-Si network.

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Serim Ilday, Hande Ustunel, F. Ömer Ilday, Daniele Toffoli, Gizem Nogay, David Friedrich, René Hübner, Bernd Schmidt, Karl-Heinz Heinig, Rasit Turan. 2013-09-17. Si nano-VINe: Electrical Percolation in Quantum-Confined nc-Si:SiO2 Systems. https://arxiv.org/abs/1309.4400

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