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 influence of reactor wall conditions on the characteristics of high density fluorocarbon plasma etch processes has been studied. Results obtained during the etching of oxide, nitride, and silicon in an inductively coupled plasma source fed with various feedgases, such as CHF3 , C3F6 , and C3F6/H2 , indicate that the reactor wall temperature is an important parameter in the etch process. Ade...

A brief survey is given of the thermochemistry of a number of silicon-containing substances that are of interest in modern technology. Among those discussed are: silicalite (SiO2), silicon disulfide (SiS2), the crystalline and vitreous forms of silicon diselenide (SiSen), silicon sesquitelluride (Si2Te3), silicon nitride (Si3N4), and vanadium disilicide (VSi2).

Silicon nitride thin films play an important role in the realization of sensors, filters, and high-performance circuits. Estimates of the dielectric function in the far- and mid-IR regime are derived from the observed transmittance spectra for a commonly employed low-stress silicon nitride formulation. The experimental, modeling, and numerical methods used to extract the dielectric parameters w...

Silicon nitride waveguides with a monolayer of colloidal quantum dots embedded inside were fabricated using a low-temperature deposition process and an optimized dry etching step for the composite layers. We experimentally demonstrated the luminescence of the embedded quantum dots is preserved and the loss of these hybrid waveguide wires is as low as 2.69dB/cm at 900nm wavelength. This hybrid i...

The early stages of thin film growth from the rf glow discharge of silane-based gas mixtures have been systematically studied by structural characterizations of the silicon based multilayers. The x-ray diffraction, its rocking curve and x-ray interference of hydrogenated amorphous silicon(a-Si:H, 10 % 200 A thick)/stoichiometric silicon nitride (a-SigNq:H, 25 % 250 A) multiple layers have been ...

The ability to selectively chemically functionalize silicon nitride (Si3N4) or silicon dioxide (SiO2) surfaces after cleaning would open interesting technological applications. In order to achieve this goal, the chemical composition of surfaces needs to be carefully characterized so that target chemical reactions can proceed on only one surface at a time. While wet-chemically cleaned silicon di...

Amorphous silicon quantum dots (a-Si QDs) were grown in a silicon nitride film by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition. Transmission electron micrographs clearly demonstrated that a-Si QDs were formed in the silicon nitride. Photoluminescence and optical absorption energy measurement of a-Si QDs with various sizes revealed that tuning of the photoluminescence emission from 2.0 to 2.76 eV i...

Silicon nitride is a well-established material for photonic devices and integrated circuits. It displays a broad transparency window spanning from the visible to the mid-IR and waveguides can be manufactured with low losses. An absence of nonlinear multi-photon absorption in the erbium lightwave communications band has enabled various nonlinear optic applications in the past decade. Silicon nit...