During the last few years graphene has emerged as a potential candidate for electronics and optoelectronics applications due to its several salient features. Graphene is a smart material that responds to any physical change in its surrounding environment. Graphene has a very low intrinsic electronic noise and it can detect even a single gas molecule in its proximity. This property of graphene makes is a suitable and promising candidate to detect a large variety of organic/inorganic chemicals and gases. Typical solid state gas sensors usually requires high operating temperature and they cannot detect very low concentrations of gases efficiently due to intrinsic noise caused by thermal motion of charge carriers at high temperatures. They also have low resolution and stability issues of their constituent materials (such as electrolytes, electrodes, and sensing material itself) in harsh environments. It accelerates the need of development of robust, highly sensitive and efficient gas sensor with low operating temperature. Graphene and its derivatives could be a prospective replacement of these solid-state sensors due to their better electronic attributes for moderate temperature applications. The presence of extremely low intrinsic noise in graphene makes it highly suitable to detect a very low concentration of organic/inorganic compounds (even a single molecule ca be detected with graphene). In this article, we simulated a novel graphene nanoribbon based field effect transistor (FET) and used it to detect propane and butane gases. These are flammable household/industrial gases that must be detected to avoid serious accidents. The effects of atmospheric oxygen and humidity have also been studied by mixing oxygen and water molecules with desired target gases (propane and butane). The change in source-to-drain current of FET in the proximity of the target gases has been used as a detection signal. Our simulated FET device showed a noticeable change in density of states and IV-characteristics in the presence of target gas molecules. Nanoscale simulations of FET based gas sensor have been done in Quantumwise Atomistix Toolkit (ATK). ATK is a commercially available nanoscale semiconductor device simulator that is used to model a large variety of nanoscale devices. Our proposed device can be converted into a physical device to get a low cost and small sized integrated gas sensor.
The diffusion welding (DW) is a comprehensive mechanism that can be extensively used to develop silicon carbide (SiC) Schottky rectifiers as a cheaper alternative to existing mainstream contact forming technologies. In this work, the Schottky barrier diode (SBD) fabricated by depositing Al-Foil on the p-type 4H-SiC substrate with a novel technology; DW. The electrical properties of physically fabricated Al-Foil/4H-SiC SBD have been investigated. The current-voltage (I-V) and capacitance-voltage (C-V) characteristics based on the thermionic emission model in the temperature range (300 K–450 K) are investigated. It has been found that the ideality factor and barrier heights of identically manufactured Al-Foil/p-type-4H-SiC SBDs showing distinct deviation in their electrical characteristics. An improvement in the ideality factor of Al-Foil/p-type-4H-SiC SBD has been noticed with an increase in temperature. An increase in barrier height in fabricated SBD is also observed with an increase in temperature. We also found that these increases in barrier height, improve ideality factors and abnormalities in their electrical characteristics are due to structural defects initiation, discrete energy level formation, interfacial native oxide layer formation, inhomogenous doping profile distribution and tunneling current formation at the SiC sufaces.
Recently, quantum-dot-based core/shell structures have gained significance due to their optical, optoelectronic, and magnetic attributes. Controlling the fluorescence lifetime of QDs shells is imperative for various applications, including light-emitting diodes and single-photon sources. In this work, novel Cu-doped CdS/ZnS shell structures were developed to enhance the photoluminescence properties. The objective was to materialize the Cu-doped CdS/ZnS shells by the adaptation of a two-stage high-temperature doping technique. The developed nanostructures were examined with relevant characterization techniques such as transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and ultraviolet–visible (UV–vis) emission/absorption spectroscopy. Studying fluorescence, we witnessed a sharp emission peak at a wavelength of 440 nm and another emission peak at a wavelength of 620 nm, related to the fabricated Cu-doped CdS/ZnS core/shell QDs. Our experimental results revealed that Cu-doped ZnS shells adopted the crystal structure of CdS due to its larger bandgap. Consequently, this minimized lattice mismatch and offered better passivation to any surface defects, resulting in increased photoluminescence. Our developed core/shells are highly appropriate for the development of efficient light-emitting diodes.
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