Ab initio density-functional calculations using Gaussian orbitals are carried out on large Si and Ge supercells containing oxygen defects. The formation energies, local vibrational modes, and diffusion or reorientation energies of O i , O 2i , VO, VOH, and VO 2 are investigated. The piezospectroscopic tensors for O i , VO, and VO 2 are also evaluated. The vibrational modes of O i in Si are consistent with the view that the defect has effective D 3d symmetry at low hydrostatic pressures but adopts a buckled structure for large pressures. The anomalous temperature dependence of the modes of O 2i is attributed to an increased buckling of Si-O-Si when the lattice contracts. The diffusion energy of the dimer is around 0.8 eV lower than that of O i in Si and 0.6 eV in Ge. The dimer is stable against VO or VO 2 formation and the latter defect has modes close to the reported 894-cm Ϫ1 band. The reorientation energies for O and H in VO and VOH defects are found to be a few tenths of an eV and are greater when the defect has trapped an electron.

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Reliable single-photon emission is crucial for realizing efficient spin-photon entanglement and scalable quantum information systems. The silicon vacancy (V Si) in 4H-SiC is a promising single-photon emitter exhibiting millisecond spin coherence times, but suffers from low photon counts, and only one charge state retains the desired spin and optical properties. Here, we demonstrate that emission from V Si defect ensembles can be enhanced by an order of magnitude via fabrication of Schottky barrier diodes, and sequentially modulated by almost 50% via application of external bias. Furthermore, we identify charge state transitions of V Si by correlating optical and electrical measurements, and realize selective population of the bright state. Finally, we reveal a pronounced Stark shift of 55 GHz for the V1′ emission line state of V Si at larger electric fields, providing a means to modify the single-photon emission. The approach presented herein paves the way towards obtaining complete control of, and drastically enhanced emission from, V Si defect ensembles in 4H-SiC highly suitable for quantum applications.

The predictive local composition model is applied to multicomponent hydrocarbon systems with long-chain n-alkanes as solutes. The results show that it can successfully be extended to high-order systems and accurately predict the solid appearance temperature, also known as cloud point, in solutions of known composition using only binary information. The model can describe the experimentally well-known capacity of heavy alkanes to act as cloud-point depressants and explains it in terms of the nonideality of the solid solutions formed. There are good indications that no significant error is introduced by considering the multiple orthorhombic phases as a single phase. It is shown that for low concentrations in heavy fraction the interaction parameter αls can be neglected and thus the model becomes purely predictive.

Silicon solar cells containing boron and oxygen are one of the most rapidly growing forms of electricity generation. However, they suffer from significant degradation during the initial stages of use. This problem has been studied for 40 years resulting in over 250 research publications. Despite this, there is no consensus regarding the microscopic nature of the defect reactions responsible. In this paper, we present compelling evidence of the mechanism of degradation. We observe, using deep level transient spectroscopy and photoluminescence, under the action of light or injected carriers, the conversion of a deep boron-di-oxygen-related donor state into a shallow acceptor which correlates with the change in the lifetime of minority carriers in the silicon. Using ab initio modeling, we propose structures of the BsO2 defect which match the experimental findings. We put forward the hypothesis that the dominant recombination process associated with the degradation is trap-assisted Auger recombination. This assignment is supported by the observation of above bandgap luminescence due to hot carriers resulting from the Auger process.

The term junction spectroscopy embraces a wide range of techniques used to explore the properties of semiconductor materials and semiconductor devices. In this tutorial review we describe the most widely used junction spectroscopy approaches for characterizing deep-level defects in semiconductors and present some of the early work on which the principles of today's methodology are based. We outline ab-initio calculations of defect properties and give examples of how density functional theory in conjunction with formation energy and marker methods can be used to guide the interpretation of experimental results. We review recombination, generation and trapping of charge carriers associated with defects. We consider thermally driven emission and capture and describe the techniques of Deep Level Transient Spectroscopy (DLTS), high resolution Laplace DLTS, admittance spectroscopy and scanning DLTS. For the study of minority carrier related processes and wide gap materials we consider Minority Carrier Transient Spectroscopy (MCTS), Optical DLTS (ODLTS and DLOS) together with some of their many variants. Capacitance, current and conductance measurements enable carrier exchange processes associated with the defects to be detected. We explain how these methods are used in order to understand the behaviour of point defects, the determination of charge states and negative-U (Hubbard correlation energy) behaviour. We provide, or reference, examples from a wide range of materials including Si, SiGe, GaAs, GaP, GaN, InGaN, InAlN and ZnO.

Hydroxyapatite (HAp) is an important component of mammal bones and teeth, being widely used in prosthetic implants. Despite the importance of HAp in medicine, several promising applications involving this material (e.g., in photo-catalysis) depend on how well we understand its fundamental properties. Among the ones that are either unknown or not known accurately, we have the electronic band structure and all that relates to it, including the bandgap width. We employ state-of-the-art methodologies, including density hybrid-functional theory and many-body perturbation theory within the dynamically screened single-particle Green's function approximation, to look at the optoelectronic properties of HAp. These methods are also applied to the calculation of defect levels. We find that the use of a mix of (semi-)local and exact exchange in the exchange-correlation functional brings a drastic improvement to the band structure. Important side effects include improvements in the description of dielectric and optical properties not only involving conduction band (excited) states but also the valence. We find that the highly dispersive conduction band bottom of HAp originates from anti-bonding σ* states along the ⋯OH-OH-⋯ infinite chain, suggesting the formation of a conductive 1D-ice phase. The choice of the exchange-correlation treatment to the calculation of defect levels was also investigated by using the OH-vacancy as a testing model. We find that donor and acceptor transitions obtained within semi-local density functional theory (DFT) differ from those of hybrid-DFT by almost 2 eV. Such a large discrepancy emphasizes the importance of using a high-quality description of the electron-electron interactions in the calculation of electronic and optical transitions of defects in HAp.