Surface plasmons, a unique property of metal nanoparticles, have been widely applied to enhance the performance of optical and electrical devices. In this study, a high quality zinc oxide (ZnO) thin film was grown on a quartz substrate by a radio frequency magnetron sputtering technique, and a metal-semiconductor-metal structured ultraviolet detector was prepared on the ZnO film. The responsivity of the photodetector was enhanced from 0.836 to 1.306 A/W by sputtering metal (Pt) nanoparticles on the surface of the device. In addition, the absorption of the ZnO thin film was enhanced partly in the ultraviolet band. It is revealed that Pt nanoparticles play a key role in enhancing the performance of the photodetectors, where surface plasma resonance occurs.

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Embedded silica nanoparticles in thin-film silicon solar cells have some advantages over metal nanoparticles in enhancing optical absorption of silicon such as no loss, better compatibility with antireflection coating and extremely low dangling bond densities and interface recombination velocities. To the best of our knowledge, we have carried out the first systematic study of optical absorption enhancement with silica nanoparticles of different radii, array periods and depths in the silica substrate with the finite-difference time-domain method, and we have obtained the optimum values of the nanoparticle parameters. We discuss the physical mechanism of the optical absorption enhancement in detail and attribute the enhancement to the superposition of the particle scattering effect and the Fabry–Perot resonance effect.

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The abilities to trigger and guide high-voltage discharge by using single and multiple filaments (MFs) are experimentally studied. It is shown that the discharge voltage threshold can be reduced significantly in both regimes of single and MF; however, the MF does not gain a larger reduction than a single filament. This behavior of the MF is attributed to the single discharge path rather than simultaneous multiple ones as one might expect during the discharge process.

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This paper presents a magnetically sensitive transistor using a nc-Si:H/c-Si heterojunction as an emitter junction. By adopting micro electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) technology and chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method, the nc-Si:H/c-Si heterojunction silicon magnetically sensitive transistor (HSMST) chips were designed and fabricated on a p-type <100> orientation double-side polished silicon wafer with high resistivity. In addition, a collector load resistor (RnormalL) was integrated on the chip, and the resistor converted the collector current (InormalC) to a collector output voltage (Vout). When InormalB = 8.0 mA, VDD = 10.0 V, and RnormalL = 4.1 kΩ, the magnetic sensitivity (SnormalV) at room temperature and temperature coefficient (αnormalC) of the collector current for HSMST were 181 mV/T and −0.11%/°C, respectively. The experimental results show that the magnetic sensitivity and temperature characteristics of the proposed transistor can be obviously improved by the use of a nc-Si:H/c-Si heterojunction as an emitter junction.