Abstract
Here, we report that the tensile strain in silicon nanocrystals embedded in silicon nitride significantly changes the size-dependent evolution of the conduction and valence energy levels, compared with strain-free silicon nanocrystals. Using capacitance spectroscopy, the quantum-confined energy shifts in the conduction and valence levels were identified as ΔEC(eV) = 11.7/d2, and ΔEV(eV) = −4.5/d2, where d is the mean diameter of the silicon nanocrystals in nanometers. These findings indicated that the tensile strain in the silicon nanocrystals significantly increased the quantum confinement, by a factor of 3.3 in the conduction levels, and by a factor of 1.8 in the valence levels.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1616-1621 |
Number of pages | 6 |
Journal | Current Applied Physics |
Volume | 17 |
Issue number | 12 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Dec 2017 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2017 Elsevier B.V.
Keywords
- Capacitance spectroscopy
- Quantum confinement
- Semiconductor nanocrystal
- Tensile strain