Abstract
The crystalline silicon quantum dots (Si QDs) depending on growth temperature were investigated using plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition. The size of Si QDs was increased with increasing growth temperature and the ratio between silicon-related gas flow and nitrogen-related gas flow. This is because the growth rate of Si QDs decreases due to surface sites blocking by hydrogen. Hydrogen atoms dissociated from N-H and Si-H could promote the growth of crystalline phase silicon QDs.
Highlights
Since 1990 [1], silicon quantum dots (Si QDs) have been intensively studied because of the possibility of applications such as compatible metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) devices [2], light source [3,4,5], fluorescent tags for biomedical applications [6], and their novel applications with electrical and optical functions
To investigate the effect of size distribution of Si QDs, we performed transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and transmission electron diffraction (TED) analyses of Si QDs embedded in the silicon nitride film in Figure 1a, Figure 1b and Figure 1c and the size distribution of Si QDs was obtained from the TEM image in Figure 1d, Figure 1e and Figure 1f
These results reveal that the growth temperature can control the size of Si QDs, while Si QDs are the crystalline phase even at the low temperature
Summary
Since 1990 [1], silicon quantum dots (Si QDs) have been intensively studied because of the possibility of applications such as compatible metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) devices [2], light source [3,4,5], fluorescent tags for biomedical applications [6], and their novel applications with electrical and optical functions. For accomplishment of various applications, we need to be trying to understand how to control the size of Si QD embedded in an insulating layer. According to the structural size of Si QD, this is because confined and/or recombined carriers in Si QD represent their different electrical and optical properties [7,8,9,10]. Few papers were reported about the structural properties of Si QDs embedded in silicon nitride. It is necessary that we understand silicon nanostructures to freely control those structures. We report on the structural properties of crystalline Si QDs embedded in silicon nitride grown at low temperature. Silicon nitride films containing Si QDs were grown by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD), in which nitrogen-diluted 5% SiH4 and NH3 were used as the sources of reactants. The structures of Si QD were investigated by a high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (TEM)
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