The list of semiconductor materials with spectroscopically fingerprinted self-interstitials is very short. M-center in 4H-SiC, a bistable defect responsible for family electron traps, has been deprived model which could unveil its real importance almost two decades. Using advanced first-principles calculations and junction spectroscopy, we demonstrate that the properties M, including bistabilit...

We investigate a ballistic InSb nanoflag-based Josephson junction with Nb superconducting contacts. The high transparency of the superconductor-semiconductor interfaces enables exploration quantum transport parallel short and long conducting channels. Under microwave irradiation, we observe half-integer Shapiro steps that are robust to temperature, suggesting their possible nonequilibrium origi...

The Sun provides approximately 100,000 terawatts to the Earth which is about 10000 times more than the present rate of the world's present energy consumption. Photovoltaic cells are being increasingly used to tap into this huge resource and will play a key role in future sustainable energy systems. So far, solid-state junction devices, usually made of silicon, crystalline or amorphous, and prof...

The conventional analysis of surface plasmon modes on dielectric-metal interfaces requires clearly defining the permittivity discontinuity at the interface. A pivotal assumption of such an analysis is that the formation of the dielectric-metal interface does not change the material properties and the materials forming the interface have identical permittivities before and after the formation of...

Lipid bilayers on silicon may become the matrix of future bioelectronic devices if the junction is sufficiently insulating. We touched the open gate of a field-effect transistor with a preformed giant lipid vesicle and bound the membrane by means of polyelectrolyte interaction. The sheet resistance along the junction was 100 GΩ and the membrane resistance was above 100 GΩ at a contact area of 1...

Excitonic effects are introduced in standard semiconductor device modelling of solar cells. Previous work by the groups of Green and of Zhang is extended here to also include field dependent exciton dissociation in the space charge layer (SCL) of a np diode, and exciton surface dissociation or charge transfer at the contact or at the junction. A clear result is that it is possible to apply the ...

We have made Na (+) and He (+) ions incident on the surface of solid state tunnel junctions and measured the energy loss due to atomic displacement and electronic excitations. Each tunnel junction consists of an ultrathin film metal-oxide-semiconductor device which can be biased to create a band of hot electrons useful for driving chemical reactions at surfaces. Using the binary collision appro...

Plasmonic hot-electron devices are attractive candidates for light-energy harvesting and photodetection applications. For solid state devices, the most compact and straightforward architecture is the metal-semiconductor Schottky junction. However convenient, this structure introduces limitations such as the elevated dark current associated to thermionic emission, or constraints for device desig...

Spin injection and extraction are at the core of semiconductor spintronics. Electrical injection is one method of choice for the creation of a sizeable spin polarization in a semiconductor, requiring especially tailored tunnel or Schottky barriers. Alternatively, optical orientation can be used to generate spins in semiconductors with significant spin-orbit interaction, if optical selection rul...

We show electric field control of the spin accumulation at the interface of the oxide semiconductor Nb-SrTiO_{3} with Co/AlO_{x} spin injection contacts at room temperature. The in-plane spin lifetime τ_{∥}, as well as the ratio of the out-of-plane to in-plane spin lifetime τ_{⊥}/τ_{∥}, is manipulated by the built-in electric field at the semiconductor surface, without any additional gate conta...