M. Stange

Formation of nanoporous Si upon self-organized growth of Al and Si nanostructures.

Nanostructured materials offer unique electronic and optical properties compared to their bulk counterparts. The challenging part of the synthesis is to create a balance between the control of design, size limitations, up-scalability and contamination. In this work we show that self-organized Al nanowires in amorphous Si can be produced at room temperature by magnetron co-sputtering using two individual targets. Nanoporous Si, containing nanotunnels with dimensions within the quantum confinement regime, were then made by selective etching of Al. The material properties, film growth, and composition of the films were investigated for different compositions. In addition, the reflectance of the etched film has been measured.

Structure and optical properties of aSiAl and aSiAlHx magnetron sputtered thin films

Thin films of homogeneous mixture of amorphous silicon and aluminum were produced with magnetron sputtering using 2-phase Al–Si targets. The films exhibited variable compositions, with and without the presence of hydrogen, aSi1−xAlx and aSi1−xAlxHy. The structure and optical properties of the films were investigated using transmission electron microscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, UV-VisNIR spectrometry, ellipsometry, and atomistic modeling. We studied the effect of alloying aSi with Al (within the range 0–25 at. %) on the optical band gap, refractive index, transmission, and absorption. Alloying aSi with Al resulted in a non-transparent film with a low band gap ( 1 eV. Variations of the Al and hydrogen content allowed for tuning of the optoelectronic properties. The films are stable up to a temperature of 300 °C. At this temperature, we observed Al induced crystallization of the amorphous silicon and the presence of large Al part...