In this thesis, colloidal nanocrystalline silicon (ncSi) capped with allylbenzene (AB) groups, is created using a sol-gel method. This novel material, AB-ncSi, is size separated and its optical, structural, and electrical characteristics are investigated in detail. For optical characterization, the photoluminescence (PL) peak is located for each fraction of the nanoparticles to determine its diameter. The AB-ncSi samples have diameters ranging from 2.89 nm to 7.65 nm. Ellipsometry and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) are used to estimate the film thickness and average distance between the particles, respectively, for structural characterization. No correlation was found between AB-ncSi size and film thickness however the estimated average distance between the particles decreased with decreasing diameter. Finally, for electrical characterization, conductivity of size-separated samples is measured and the temperature dependent conductance is analyzed. The results emerging from these analyses suggest that the charge transport mechanism for AB-ncSi is nearest-neighbor hopping (NNH) albeit VRH is also a potential contributor.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/42972 |
| Date | 28 November 2013 |
| Creators | Jeong, Junho |
| Contributors | Kherani, Nazir P. |
| Source Sets | University of Toronto |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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