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Size-dependent critical transition in the origin of light emission from core–shell Si–SiO2 nanoparticles.
- Source :
- Journal of Materials Chemistry C; 7/14/2020, Vol. 8 Issue 26, p9012-9023, 12p
- Publication Year :
- 2020
-
Abstract
- The origin of the light emission from nanosilicon systems, such as crystalline silicon nanoparticles (Si-NPs), has been an intensively debated issue, with seemingly contradicting literature results pointing to different mechanisms. Here, the origin of the photoluminescence (PL) from application-grade Si–SiO<subscript>2</subscript> core–shell nanoparticles with different sizes and synthesized with the industrially scalable high-yield nonthermal silane plasma method has been elucidated. It is found that the commonly observed PL from these Si-NPs originates, in general, from two processes: recombination within the nanoparticle silicon core and recombination within the oxide shell. The photon energies of both emissions increase with decreasing nanoparticle size. Importantly, a nanoparticle size dependence of the relative contribution of the two processes to the overall PL is established. For large (small) Si-NPs, the luminescence is dominated by the core (oxide-shell) emission. Interestingly, the transition between these two regime limits occurs within an extremely narrow nanoparticle size range (∼0.5 nm). This critical transition, in combination with the close photon energies of the two emission components, is responsible for the common observation of only a single unstructured PL band for Si-NPs and for the seemingly conflicting assignments of the origin of this luminescence found in the literature for apparently similar Si-NPs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 20507526
- Volume :
- 8
- Issue :
- 26
- Database :
- Complementary Index
- Journal :
- Journal of Materials Chemistry C
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 144481246
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1039/d0tc01442g