Defects in silicon nanowires have been investigated using the electron spin resonance ESR method. The ESR signals consist of three features: a strong resonance at g=2.002 49, a weak line at g=2.000 48, and a broad feature at g=2.005 41. From the saturation behavior and oxidation-related and temperature dependence analysis, we ascribe that the strong resonance corresponds to the EX center and th...

Design of novel materials for efficient solar energy conversion is critical to the development of green energy technology. In this work, we present a first-principles study on the design of nanostructures for solar energy harvesting on the basis of the density functional theory. We show that the indirect band structure of bulk silicon nitride is transferred to direct bandgap in nanowire. We fin...

The stability and elasto-mechanical properties of tetragonal and cagelike or clathrate nanowires of Si are investigated and compared using molecular dynamics simulations. Our results show that cagelike nanowires, while possessing lesser density, are able to maintain their structural integrity over a larger range of strain conditions than the tetrahedral nanowires, making them a better candidate...

Hybrid photoelectrochemistry and heterojunction solar cells made from carbon nanotubes and silicon nanowires show high energy conversion efficiencies of up to 6%.

A straightforward metal-particle-induced, highly localized site-specific corrosion-like mechanism was proposed for the formation of aligned silicon-nanowire arrays on silicon in aqueous HF/AgNO3 solution on the basis of convincing experimental results. The etching process features weak dependence on the doping of the silicon wafers and, thus, provides an efficient method to prepare silicon nano...

A combination of template-assisted metal catalytic etching and self-limiting oxidation has been successfully implemented to yield core-shell silicon nanowire arrays with inner diameter down to sub-10 nm. The diameter of the polystyrene spheres after reactive ion etching and the thickness of the deposited Ag film are both crucial for the removal of the polystyrene spheres. The mean diameter of t...

Surface passivation and bulk carrier lifetime of silicon nanowires (SiNWs) are essential for their application in solar cell devices. The effective minority carrier lifetime of a semiconductor material is influenced by both its surface passivation and bulk carrier lifetime. We found that the effective carrier lifetime of SiNWs passivated with aluminum oxide (Al2O3) was significantly influenced ...

Nanoscale light-emitting diodes (nanoLEDs) with colors spanning from the ultraviolet to near-infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum were prepared using a solution-based approach in which emissive electron-doped semiconductor nanowires were assembled with nonemissive hole-doped silicon nanowires in a crossed nanowire architecture. Singleand multicolor nanoLED devices and arrays were mad...

SnO2 nanowires were prepared on bare oxidized silicon, Au and SnO2 coated substrates by thermal evaporation of tin grains in argon atmosphere at 900°C. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) were used to characterize the SnO2 nanowires. FE-SEM images indicated that the size of SnO2 nanowires depend on the type of substrate. Gas sensor was fabricated by ...