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Electrical properties of nanocrystalline silicon

MAGDALENA LIDIA CIUREA1,*

Affiliation

  1. National Institute of Materials Physics, Bucharest-Magurele 077125, Romania

Abstract

The transport properties of nanocrystalline silicon films are presented. The studies were performed on fresh and stabilized nanocrystalline porous silicon (nc-PS) and on Si/SiO2 nanocomposite films. Current – voltage characteristics and the temperature dependence of the dark current were measured on both systems. From the current – voltage characteristics of the oxidized nc-PS, the Si – SiO2 potential barrier was determined (2.2 eV). The Si/SiO2 measurements proved that the main conduction mechanism for the nanodot systems is the field-assisted tunneling under Coulomb blockade. The quantum confinement was evidenced by the activation energies observed in the current – temperature characteristics and it was modeled by means of an infinite quantum well. The trapping – detrapping processes were studied by using the Optical Charging Spectroscopy (OCS) method: the traps are filed by illumination with a suitable wavelength at low temperature and the detrapping is produced by heating at a constant rate. The experimental investigations evidenced six trapping levels in nc-PS, four located at the surface/interface and two deep ones located in the bulk. The deepest level was observed only in oxidized samples. The modeling of the OCS trapping – detrapping processes allows for the determination of the characteristic parameters that cannot be directly obtained from the measurements..

Keywords

Nanocrystalline silicon, Electrical transport, Quantum confinement.

Submitted at: Oct. 25, 2005
Accepted at: Jan. 26, 2006

Citation

MAGDALENA LIDIA CIUREA, Electrical properties of nanocrystalline silicon, Journal of Optoelectronics and Advanced Materials Vol. 8, Iss. 1, pp. 13-19 (2006)