Amorphous and crystalline silicon nanocomposites have been shown to act as effective “sensitizers” for erbium ions. In the present work, a series of erbium-doped (0.2 at.%) SiOx:Er films (x = 1 - 1.8) were synthesized by physical vapor deposition and subsequently annealed at temperatures ranging from 400°C to 1100°C to induce phase separation and cluster growth. Silicon nanocluster (Si-NC) and Er3+ photoluminescence intensity spectra and dynamics were investigated as a function of SiOx composition, annealing temperature, pump wavelength and power, and specimen temperature in order to determine characteristic cross-sections and to map the efficiency of the energy transfer process between Si-NCs and Er3+ ions. Additionally, two types of optical waveguides based on SiOx:Er materials were fabricated using conventional CMOS compatible microfabrication processes. Waveguide propagation losses as well as signal absorption and enhancement were investigated under pumping conditions to evaluate the use of SiOx:Er materials as amplifying media. / Communications and Signal Processing

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Mode of access: World Wide Web. / Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 167-178). / Electronic reproduction. / Also available by subscription via World Wide Web / xvi, 178 leaves, bound ill. 29 cm

This thesis demonstrates the effective use of low temperature molecular beam epitaxy to encapsulate planar Si:P (phosphorus-in-silicon) devices lithographically patterned by scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM) without significant redistribution of the dopants. To achieve this goal, low temperature magnetotransport is used in combination with STM, Auger electron spectroscopy and secondary ion-mass spectrometry to analyse Si:P ??-doped samples fabricated under different doping and growth conditions. An important aspect of this project is the use of large 1 ?? 1 cm2 Si(001) samples which are about five times larger than standard STM samples. The larger sample size is necessary for post-STM fabrication lithography processes in a cleanroom but presents problems for preparing atomically clean surfaces. The ability to prepare clean and atomically flat Si(001) surfaces for STM lithography on such 1 ?? 1 cm2 samples is demonstrated, and it is shown that Si:P ??-doped layers fabricated on these surfaces exhibit complete electrical activation. Two dopant sources (gaseous PH3 and solid GaP source) were investigated to assess their compatibility with STM-lithography on the H:Si(001) surface. The findings show that while the PH3 and GaP sources result in near identical electrical qualities, only PH3 molecules are compatible with H-resist based lithography for controlled nano-scale doping. For achieving complete activation of the P dopants, it is shown that an anneal to ??? 350 ???C to incorporate P atoms into the Si surface prior to encapsulation is critical. While it is known that the presence of H during growth degrades the quality of Si epitaxy, investigations in this thesis indicate that it has no significant effect on dopant activation. Systematic studies performed to assess the impact of growth temperature recommend an encapsulation temperature of 250 ???C for achieving optimal electrical qualities with minimal dopant segregation. In addition, it is shown that rapid thermal anneals (RTAs) at temperatures &lt 700 ???C provide only marginal improvement in the electrical quality of Si:P ??-doped samples encapsulated at 250 ???C, while RTA temperatures &gt 700 ???C should be avoided due to the high probability of dopant redistribution. To elucidate the nature of 2D transport in Si:P ??-doped devices, a detailed analysis of the low temperature magnetotransport for Si:P ??-doped layers with doping densities in the range ??? 0.2 ??? 2 ?? 1014 cm???2 was carried out. Using conventional 2D theories for disordered systems, both weak localisation (WL) and electron-electron interactions (EEI) are shown to contribute almost equal corrections to the 2D conductivity. In particular, it is found that EEI can introduce a significant correction in the Hall coefficient RH (hence Hall density) especially in the low density/temperature regime and the need to correct for this when using the Hall density to estimate the activated electron density is highlighted. While the electronic mean free path in such highly doped ??-layers is typically &lt 10 nm making ballistic transport in these devices difficult to observe, the phase coherence length can extend to almost 200 nm at about 0.3???0.5 K for doping densities of ??? 1 ??? 2 ?? 1014 cm???2. Finally, the optimised encapsulation strategy developed in this thesis is applied to a 2D square device fabricated by STM. The device exhibits Ohmic conductivity with complete dopant activation. An analysis of its low temperature magnetotransport shows that the device behaves similarly to a Si:P ??-doped layer encapsulated under similar conditions, thus highlighting that the STM patterning process had no adverse effect on device quality.

Transparent conductive oxides (TCOs) and polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si) thin-films are very promising for application in photovoltaics. It is extremely challenging to develop cheap TCOs and poly-Si films to make photovoltaic devices. The aim of this thesis is to study sputtered aluminum-doped ZnO TCO and poly-Si films by solid-phase crystallization (SPC) for application in low-cost photovoltaics. The investigated aspects have been (i) to develop and characterize sputtered aluminum-doped ZnO (ZnO:Al) films that can be used as a TCO material on crystalline silicon solar cells, (ii) to explore the potential of the developed ZnO:Al films for application in ZnO:Al/c-Si heterojunction solar cells, (iii) to make and characterize poly-Si thin-films on different kinds of glass substrates by SPC using electron-beam evaporated amorphous silicon (a-Si) [referred to as EVA poly-Si material (SPC of evaporated a-Si)], and (iv) to fabricate EVA poly-Si thin-film solar cells on glass and improve the energy conversion efficiency of these cells by post-crystallization treatments. The ZnO:Al work in this thesis is focused on the correlation between film characteristics and deposition parameters, such as rf sputter power (Prf), working gas pressure (Pw), and substrate temperature (Tsub), to get a clear picture of film properties in the optimized conditions for application in photovoltaic devices. Especially the laterally non-uniform film properties resulting from the laterally inhomogeneous erosion of the target material are investigated in detail. The influence of Prf, Pw and Tsub on the structural, electrical, optical and surface morphology properties of ZnO:Al films is discussed. It is found that the lateral variations of the parameters of ZnO:Al films prepared by rf magnetron sputtering can be reduced to acceptable levels by optimising the deposition parameters. ZnO:Al/c-Si heterojunction solar cells are fabricated and characterized to demonstrate the feasibility of the fabricated ZnO:Al films for application in heterojunction solar cells. In this application, expensive indium-tin oxide (ITO) is usually used. Under the standard AM1.5G spectrum (100 mW/cm2, 25 ??C), the best fabricated cell shows an open-circuit voltage of 411 mV, a short-circuit current density of 30.0 mA/cm2, a fill factor of 66.7 %, and a conversion efficiency of 8.2 %. This is believed to be the highest stable efficiency ever reported for this type of cell. By means of dark forward current density-voltage-temperature (J-V-T) measurements, it is shown that the dominant current transport mechanism in the ZnO:Al/c-Si solar cells, in the intermediate forward bias voltage region, is trap-assisted multistep tunneling. EVA poly-Si thin-films are prepared on four types of glass substrates (planar and textured glass, both either bare or SiN-coated) based on evaporated Si, which is a cheaper Si deposition method than the existing technologies. The textured glass is realized by the UNSW-developed AIT process (AIT = aluminium-induced texture). The investigation is concentrated on finding optimized process parameters and evaluating film crystallization quality. It is found that EVA poly-Si films have a grain size in the range 0.8-1.5 ??m, and a preferential (111) orientation. UV reflectance and Raman spectroscopy measurements reveal a high crystalline material quality, both at the air-side surface and in the bulk. EVA cells are fabricated in both substrate and superstrate configuration. Special attention is paid to improving the Voc of the solar cells. For this purpose, after the SPC process, the samples receive the two post-crystallization treatments: (i) a rapid thermal anneal (RTA), and (ii) a plasma hydrogenation. It is found that two post-crystallization treatments more than double the 1-Sun Voc of the substrate-type cells. It is demonstrated that RTA improves the structural material quality of the cells. Furthermore, a hydrogenation step is shown to significantly improve the electronic material quality of the cells. Based on the RTA???d and hydrogenated EVA poly-Si material, the first mesa-type EVA cells are fabricated in substrate configuration, by using sputtered Al-doped ZnO as the transparent front contact. The investigation is focused on addressing the correlation between the type of the substrate and cell performance. Optical, electrical and photovoltaic properties of the devices are characterized. It is found that the performance of EVA cells depends on the glass substrate topography. For cells on textured glass, the AIT texture is shown to have a beneficial effect on the optical absorption of EVA films. It is demonstrated that a SiN barrier layer on the AIT-textured glass improves significantly both the crystalline quality of the poly-Si films and the energy conversion efficiency of the resulting solar cells. For cells on planar glass, a SiN film between the planar glass and the poly-Si film has no obvious effect on the cell properties. The investigations in this thesis clearly show that EVA poly-Si films are very promising for poly-Si thin-film solar cells on glass.

Porous silicon (PSi) photonic crystals have aroused research interest as label-free chemical and biological sensing transducers owing to the ease of fabrication, high quality optics and a sensitive optical response to changes in efractive index. A major impediment to using PSi materials as sensors is the relative instability of the silicon surface to oxidation in ambient air and aqueous environments. This thesis reports methods for derivatising PSi towards realisation of 1-D silicon-based photonic materials for applications in biology and medicine. Narrow-linewidth rugate filters, a class of photonic crystal, are fabricated on silicon to display a high reflectivity resonant line in the reflectance spectrum. The position of the resonance is sensitive to changes in refractive index, thus allowing quantification of infiltrating biological species. The efficacy of rugate filters as biosensing transducers requires 1) protection from aqueous degradation, 2) resistance to non-specific adsorption and 3) distal reactivity for coupling of biorecognition molecules. Two chemical strategies based on hydrosilylation of functional alkenes are compared for stabilising the PSi structure against oxidation whilst resisting non-specific adsorption of biomolecules. Immobilisation of peptides to the organic layers is demonstrated for optical detection of protease enzymes. Introduction of protease results in cleavage of the immobilised peptides within the rugate filters, detected by an optical blue-shift to shorter wavelengths. To increase the sensitivity to proteolysis, covalent mmobilisation of biopolymers is evaluated using gelatin as a model substrate. Digestion of gelatin is detected down to 37 attomoles of protease. Furthermore, the surface chemistry allows specific capture of live cells and incubation with stimulated macrophages in tissue culture results in optical detection of released gelatinase enzymes. The generality of the surface chemistry allows for a range of other biological applications to be investigated. An alternative biorecognition interface, hybrid lipid bilayer membranes, containing specific recognition elements for cholera toxin allows optical detection of affinity capture and concentration within the PSi. In addition, the suitability of chemically modified photonic crystals as reservoirs for mass spectrometry is evaluated towards biomolecule quantification after optical detection. A robust and flexible surface chemistry on PSi photonic crystals is critical to performance in a range of biological assays and a necessary requirement for wide-scale employment.

Silicon quantum dots (QDs) in SiO2 superlattices were fabricated by alternate deposition of silicon oxide (SiO2) and silicon-rich oxide (SRO), i.e. SiOx (x<2), and followed by high temperature annealing. A deposited SRO film is thermodynamically unstable below 1173oC and phase separation and diffusion of Si atoms in the amorphous SiO2 matrix creates nano-scaled Si quantum dots. The quantum-confined energy gap was measured by static photoluminescence (PL) using an Argon ion laser operating at 514.5 nm. The measured energy band gaps of crystalline Si QDs in SiO2 matrix at room temperature (300 K) show that the emission energies from 1.32 eV to 1.65 eV originating Si dot sizes from 6.0 nm to 3.4 nm, respectively. There is a strong blue-shift of the PL energy peak position with decreasing the quantum dot size and this shows the evidence of quantum confinement of our fabricated Si QDs in SiO2 matrix. The PL results indicate that the fabricated Si QDs in SiO2 matrix could be suitable for the device application such as top cell material for all-silicon tandem solar cells. Silicon QD superlattices in nitride matrix were fabricated by alternate deposition of silicon nitride (Si3N4) and silicon-rich nitride (SRN) by PECVD or co-sputtering of Si and Si3N4 targets. High temperature furnace annealing under a nitrogen atmosphere was required to form nano-scaled silicon quantum dots in the nitride matrix. The band gap of silicon QD superlattice in nitride matrix (3.6- 7.0 nm sized dots) is observed in the energy range of 1.35- 1.98 eV. It is about 0.3- 0.4 eV blue-shifted from the band gap of the same sized quantum dots in silicon oxide. It is believed that the increased band gap is caused by a silicon nitride passivation effect. Silicon-rich carbide (SRC, i.e. Si1-xCx) thin films with varying atomic ratio of the Si to C were fabricated by using magnetron co-sputtering from a combined Si and C or SiC targets. Off-stoichiometric Si1-xCx is of interest as a precursor to realize Si QDs in SiC matrix, because it is thermodynamically metastable when the composition fraction is in the range 0 < x < 0.5. Si nanocrystals are therefore able to precipitate during a post-annealing process. SiC quantum dot superlattices in SiC matrix were fabricated by alternate deposition of thin layers of carbon-rich silicon carbide (CRC) and SRC using a layer by layer deposition technique. CRC layers were deposited by reactive co-sputtering of Si and SiC targets with CH4. The PL energy band gap (2.0 eV at 620 nm) from 5.0 nm SRC layers could be from the nanocrystalline ??-SiC with Si-O bonds and the PL energy band gap (1.86 eV at 665 nm) from 6.0 nm SRC layers could be from the nanocrystalline ??-SiC with amorphous SiC clusters, respectively. The dielectric material for an all-silicon tandem cell is preferably silicon oxide, silicon nitride or silicon carbide. It is found that for carrier mobility, dot spacing for a given Bloch mobility is in the order: SiC > Si3N4 > SiO2. By ab-initio simulation and PL results, the band gap for a given dot size is in the order: SiC > Si3N4 > SiO2. However, the PL intensity for a given dot size is in the order: SiC < Si3N4 < SiO2.

The thesis focuses the design and fabrication of silica-on-silicon multimode interference (MMI) devices for optical communications. Firstly, the relationship between different kinds of multimode interference was established for the first time. This gives a clearer understanding of the multimode interference and helps to design better performance optical MMI devices With the consideration of weak lateral light confinement, different kinds of novel approaches to designing high performance MMI devices are developed. The first new approach is for optimization of silica-on-silicon MMI couplers. It is shown that the length of the multimode section can be varied in a well-defined range to find optimal device performance. The range is linked to the propagation constant spacing of fundamental and higher order modes of the multimode waveguide. The second approach is to introduce a new criterion for designing a MMI coupler with central input. According to overlapping interference analysis, one image space should be left for the adjacent output waveguides because of the lateral distribution of alternatively vanishing and non-vanishing images. This consideration is neglected in previous work and is shown to be important for achieving good uniformity MMI power splitters. Thirdly, a new design of silica-on-silicon multimode interference (MMI) device is proposed. Deeply etched air trenches define the boundaries of the multimode section to achieve strong lateral confinement, resulting in lower loss and imbalance. The access waveguides, however, are buried channel and square core, giving low fibre insertion loss and low polarization dependence. The novel design balanced requirement of the strong lateral confinement of the field in the multimode waveguides and the matching between the fiber and the access waveguides. Then a new approach of designing silica-on-silicon optical switches based on cascaded MMI couplers is presented. The approach combines the transfer matrix method, optimisation of the MMI dimensions, and mode propagation analysis (MPA) for calculation of phase shifts. The feasibility of the large port count switches is also discussed. It is shown that the good performance devices can be realized with a large port count of 32. Finally MMI couplers based on silica-on-silicon optical waveguides were fabricated. The Ge-doped silica waveguides were fabricated by HC-PECVD and RIE. Fabrication processes such as thin film deposition and etching are discussed. Good performance devices have been realized.

The thesis focuses the design and fabrication of silica-on-silicon multimode interference (MMI) devices for optical communications. Firstly, the relationship between different kinds of multimode interference was established for the first time. This gives a clearer understanding of the multimode interference and helps to design better performance optical MMI devices With the consideration of weak lateral light confinement, different kinds of novel approaches to designing high performance MMI devices are developed. The first new approach is for optimization of silica-on-silicon MMI couplers. It is shown that the length of the multimode section can be varied in a well-defined range to find optimal device performance. The range is linked to the propagation constant spacing of fundamental and higher order modes of the multimode waveguide. The second approach is to introduce a new criterion for designing a MMI coupler with central input. According to overlapping interference analysis, one image space should be left for the adjacent output waveguides because of the lateral distribution of alternatively vanishing and non-vanishing images. This consideration is neglected in previous work and is shown to be important for achieving good uniformity MMI power splitters. Thirdly, a new design of silica-on-silicon multimode interference (MMI) device is proposed. Deeply etched air trenches define the boundaries of the multimode section to achieve strong lateral confinement, resulting in lower loss and imbalance. The access waveguides, however, are buried channel and square core, giving low fibre insertion loss and low polarization dependence. The novel design balanced requirement of the strong lateral confinement of the field in the multimode waveguides and the matching between the fiber and the access waveguides. Then a new approach of designing silica-on-silicon optical switches based on cascaded MMI couplers is presented. The approach combines the transfer matrix method, optimisation of the MMI dimensions, and mode propagation analysis (MPA) for calculation of phase shifts. The feasibility of the large port count switches is also discussed. It is shown that the good performance devices can be realized with a large port count of 32. Finally MMI couplers based on silica-on-silicon optical waveguides were fabricated. The Ge-doped silica waveguides were fabricated by HC-PECVD and RIE. Fabrication processes such as thin film deposition and etching are discussed. Good performance devices have been realized.

Deposition of thin material films by sputtering is an increasingly common process in the field of silicon (Si)-based photovoltaics. One of the recently developed sputter-deposited materials applicable to Si photovoltaics comprises Si nanocrystals (NCs) embedded in a Si-based dielectric. The particular case of Si nanocrystals in a Silicon Dioxide (SiO2) matrix was studied by fabricating metal-insulator-semiconductor (MIS) devices, in which the insulating layer consists of a single layer of Si NCs in SiO2 deposited by sputtering (Si:NC-MIS devices). These test structures were subjected to impedance measurements. The presence of Si NCs was found to result in two distinct capacitance peaks. The first of these peaks is attributable to the small signal response of states at the insulator/substrate interface, enhanced by the presence of fixed charge associated with the NC layer. The second peak, which occurs without precedent, is due to external inversion layer coupling, in conjunction with a transition between tunnel-limited and semiconductor-limited electron current. Si:NC-MIS devices are also potential test structures for energy-selective contacts, based on SiO2/Si NC/SiO2 double barrier structures fabricated by sputtering. Using a one-dimensional model, current-voltage (I-V) curve simulations were performed for similar structures, in which the Si NCs are replaced by a Si quantum well (QW). The simulations showed that for non-degenerately doped Si substrates, the density of defects in the SiO2 layers can strongly influence the position of I-V curve structure induced by QW quasi-bound states. Passivation of crystalline Si (c-Si) surfaces by sputter-deposited dielectric films is another major application of sputtering for Si photovoltaics. This application was explored for the cases of sputtered SiO2 and hydrogenated Silicon Oxy-Carbide (SiOC:H). For the case of sputtered SiO2, an effective surface recombination velocity of 146 cm/s was achieved for an injection level of 1E15 cm???3. The investigated SiOC:H films were found to be unsuitable for surface passivation of Si, however their passivation performance could be slightly improved by first coating the Si surface with a chemically-grown or sputtered SiO2 layer. The investigations performed into specific aspects of sputter-deposited SiO2, Si NCs, and SiOC:H have highlighted important properties of these films, and confirmed the effectiveness of sputtering as a deposition technology for Si photovoltaics.