Silicon nanostructures for photonics

Abstract

Nanostructuring silicon is an effective way to turn silicon into a photonic material.In fact, low-dimensional silicon shows light amplification characteristics, non-linear optical effects, photon confinement in both one and two dimensions, photon trapping with evidence of light localization, and gassensing properties.

Self-organized nanopatterning of silicon surfaces by ion beam sputtering

“…This is naturally due to its well-known advantages with respect to integration [5] in microelectronic, electro-optical, electrochemical, electromechanical, sensing, and laser devices [6][7][8], and to the interesting properties of nanostructured silicon [9]. For instance, low-dimensional Si structures like nanowires are recently displaying a number of promising, novel structural, electronic, and transport properties [10].…”

Photonic Crystal and Plasmonic Silicon-Based Light Sources

“…Perhaps, a better approach would be to use Si-NCs with SiO 2 shell, which have microsecond radiative lifetimes, demonstrated material gain, and are quite well understood [2]- [6]. These Si-NCs could be fabricated by anodic etching of Si, deposited onto silicon nitride slab from solution, and capped with another silicon nitride layer deposited by plasmaenhanced CVD (PECVD) at low temperature, as was done for capacitive memory applications [27].…”

“…We studied light-emitting Si-rich Si nitride (SRN), Si nanocrystals (Si-NCs) embedded in silicon dioxide, and erbium-doped amorphous Si nitride (Er:SiN x ) systems. Both Si-NCs in SiO 2 [1]- [6] and silicon nitride [7]- [10] are well studied and show photoluminescence (PL) with wavelengths from 500 to 1000 nm. In these samples, the emission is enhanced relative to the emission from bulk Si because of electron-hole localization effects due to either quantum confinement or trapping to surface states [11].…”

Nanomechanical properties of silicon surfaces nanostructured by excimer laser

“…It exhibits a range of attractive properties, such as high melting/boiling point, thermodynamic and chemical stability, and semiconducting properties [1]. Laser beam interaction with silicon has been a major focus of interest of the research community because modified silicon surfaces exhibit novel functional properties [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. The Nd:YAG [16][17][18], excimer [19,20] and CO 2 lasers are typically used for these purposes.…”