There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality.

Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

I and i

The synthesis of massive arrays of monodispersed carbon nanotubes that are self-oriented on patterned porous silicon and plain silicon substrates is reported. The approach involves chemical vapor deposition, catalytic particle size control by substrate design, nanotube positioning by patterning, and nanotube self-assembly for orientation. The mechanisms of nanotube growth and self-orientation are elucidated. The well-ordered nanotubes can be used as electron field emission arrays. Scaling up of the synthesis process should be entirely compatible with the existing semiconductor processes, and should allow the development of nanotube devices integrated into silicon technology.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/283/5401/512.full.pdf

Self-Oriented Regular Arrays of Carbon Nanotubes and Their Field Emission Properties

The term photonic crystals appears because of the analogy between electron waves in crystals and the light waves in artificial periodic dielectric structures. During the recent years the investigation of one-, two-and three-dimensional periodic structures has attracted a widespread attention of the world optics community because of great potentiality of such structures in advanced applied optical fields. The interest in periodic structures has been stimulated by the fast development of semiconductor technology that now allows the fabrication of artificial structures, whose period is comparable with the wavelength of light in the visible and infrared ranges.

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/6354/16969/00781867.pdf

Photonic crystals

We demonstrate that a monolayer graphene membrane is impermeable to standard gases including helium. By applying a pressure difference across the membrane, we measure both the elastic constants and the mass of a single layer of graphene. This pressurized graphene membrane is the world's thinnest balloon and provides a unique separation barrier between 2 distinct regions that is only one atom thick.

/pdf/impermeable-atomic-membranes-from-graphene-sheets-xtis5huy2d.pdf

Impermeable atomic membranes from graphene sheets.

A large amount of work world-wide has been directed towards obtaining an understanding of the fundamental characteristics of porous Si. Much progress has been made following the demonstration in 1990 that highly porous material could emit very efficient visible photoluminescence at room temperature. Since that time, all features of the structural, optical and electronic properties of the material have been subjected to in-depth scrutiny. It is the purpose of the present review to survey the work which has been carried out and to detail the level of understanding which has been attained. The key importance of crystalline Si nanostructures in determining the behaviour of porous Si is highlighted. The fabrication of solid-state electroluminescent devices is a prominent goal of many studies and the impressive progress in this area is described.

The structural and luminescence properties of porous silicon

Using a careful analysis of the properties of light-emitting porous silicon (LEpSi), we conclude that a version of the “smart” quantum confinement model which was first proposed by F. Koch et al [Mat. Res. Soc. Symp. Proc. 283, 197 (1993)] and allows for the existence of surface states and dangling bonds, is compatible with experimental results. Among the new results we present in support of this model, the most striking ones concern the strong infrared photoluminescence that dominates the room temperature cw spectrum after vacuum annealing above 600 K.

Can Oxidation and Other Treatments Help Us Understand the Nature of Light-Emitting Porous Silicon?

Low-temperature vertical carrier transport in layered structures comprised of Si nanocrystals separated in the growth direction by angstrom-thick SiO2 layers exhibits entirely unexpected, well-defined resonances in conductivity. An unusual alternating current (ac) conductivity dependence on frequency and low magnetic field, negative differential conductivity, reproducible N-shaped switching and self-oscillations were observed consistently. The modeled conductivity mechanism is associated with resonant hole tunneling via quantized valence band states of Si nanocrystals. Tight-binding calculations of the quantum confinement effect for different Si nanocrystal sizes and shapes strongly support the tunneling model.

http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1209/epl/i2001-00451-1/pdf

Resonant tunneling in partially disordered silicon nanostructures

We report the results of a systematic study of the influence of the anodization and etching conditions, and chemical and thermal treatments on the properties of light-emitting porous silicon (PSI). PSI layers with stable, high efficiency photoluminescence (PL) tunable from the near infrared to the yellow have been obtained using p-type and n-type substrates. As the temperature drops below 100 K, the as-anodized PSI layers display striking changes in the PL spectra, which are absent in PSI layers that have received a post-growth treatment.

Luminescence Properties of Porous Silicon

The Drude parameters of liquid silicon at the melting temperature have been obtained from time‐resolved reflectivity measurements at 1064, 532, and 355 nm following melting of an optically thick layer by a picosecond visible laser pulse. The ratio of the electron density N to the electron mass m is found to be equal to 2.17×1059 m−3 kg−1 and the relaxation time τ to be equal to 212 as. These values are compared to previous results obtained by cw ellipsometry between 1 and 0.4 μm and by nanosecond time‐resolved ellipsometry of 632.8 nm.

Philippe M. Fauchet

Papers

Can Oxidation and Other Treatments Help Us Understand the Nature of Light-Emitting Porous Silicon?

Resonant tunneling in partially disordered silicon nanostructures

Luminescence Properties of Porous Silicon

Drude parameters of liquid silicon at the melting temperature

Time-resolved photoluminescence measurements in spark-processed blue and green emitting silicon