New Research On Silicon Structure Properties Technology

The knowledge of fundamental silicon questions and all aspects of silicon technology gives the possibility of improvement to both initial silicon material and devices on silicon basis. The articles for this book have been contributed by the much respected researchers in this area and cover the most recent developments and applications of silicon technology and some fundamental questions. This book provides the latest research developments in important aspects of silicon including nanoclusters, solar silicon, porous silicon, some technological processes, and silicon devices and also fundamental question about silicon structural perfection. This book is of interest both to fundamental research and to practicing scientists and also will be useful to all engineers and students in industry and academia.

Today, it is difficult to imagine all spheres of human activity without personal computers, solid-state electronic devices, micro- and nanoelectronics, photoconverters, and mobile communication devices. The basic material of modern electronics and for all of these industries is semiconductor silicon. Its properties and applications are determined by defects in its crystal structure. However, until now, there has been no complete and reliable description of the creation and transformation of such a defective structure. This book solves this mystery through two different approaches to semiconductor silicon: the classical and the probabilistic. This book brings together, for the first time, all existing experimental and theoretical information on the internal structure of semiconductor silicon. It will appeal to a wide range of readers, from materials scientists and practical engineers to students.

The exciting world of crystalline silicon is the source of the spectacular advancement of discrete electronic devices and solar cells. The exploitation of ever changing properties of crystalline silicon with dimensional transformation may indicate more innovative silicon based technologies in near future. For example, the discovery of nanocrystalline silicon has largely overcome the obstacles of using silicon as optoelectronic material. The further research and development is necessary to find out the treasures hidden within this material. The book presents different forms of silicon material, their preparation and properties. The modern techniques to study the surface and interface defect states, dislocations, and so on, in different crystalline forms have been highlighted in this book. This book presents basic and applied aspects of different crystalline forms of silicon in wide range of information from materials to devices.

This book brings together the most up-to-date information on the fabrication techniques, properties, and potential applications of low dimensional silicon carbide (SiC) nanostructures such as nanocrystallites, nanowires, nanotubes, and nanostructured films. It also summarizes the tremendous achievements acquired during the past three decades involving structural, electronic, and optical properties of bulk silicon carbide crystals. SiC nanostructures exhibit a range of fascinating and industrially important properties, such as diverse polytypes, stability of interband and defect-related green to blue luminescence, inertness to chemical surroundings, and good biocompatibility. These properties have generated an increasing interest in the materials, which have great potential in a variety of applications across the fields of nanoelectronics, optoelectronics, electron field emission, sensing, quantum information, energy conversion and storage, biomedical engineering, and medicine. SiC is also a most promising substitute for silicon in high power, high temperature, and high frequency microelectronic devices. Recent breakthrough pertaining to the synthesis of ultra-high quality SiC single-crystals will bring the materials closer to real applications. Silicon Carbide Nanostructures: Fabrication, Structure, and Properties provides a unique reference book for researchers and graduate students in this emerging field. It is intended for materials scientists, physicists, chemists, and engineers in microelectronics, optoelectronics, and biomedical engineering.

This book gives the first systematic and complete survey of technology and application of amorphous silicon, a material with a huge potential in electronic applications. The book features contributions by world-wide leading researchers in this field.

Silicon (Si) technologies provide an excellent platform for the design of microsystems where photonic and microelectronic functionalities are monolithically integrated on the same substrate. In recent years, a variety of passive and active Si photonic devices have been developed, and among them, photodetectors have attracted particular interest from the scientific community. Si photodiodes are typically designed to operate at visible wavelengths, but, unfortunately, their employment in the infrared (IR) range is limited due to the neglectable Si absorption over 1100 nm, even though the use of germanium (Ge) grown on Si has historically allowed operations to be extended up to 1550 nm. In recent years, significant progress has been achieved both by improving the performance of Si-based photodetectors in the visible range and by extending their operation to infrared wavelengths. Near-infrared (NIR) SiGe photodetectors have been demonstrated to have a “zero change” CMOS process flow, while the investigation of new effects and structures has shown that an all-Si approach could be a viable option to construct devices comparable with Ge technology. In addition, the capability to integrate new emerging 2D and 3D materials with Si, together with the capability of manufacturing devices at the nanometric scale, has led to the development of new device families with unexpected performance. Accordingly, this Special Issue of Micromachines seeks to showcase research papers, short communications, and review articles that show the most recent advances in the field of silicon photodetectors and their respective applications.

Since the 1997 publication of "Silicon Carbide - A Review of Fundamental Questions and Applications to Current Device Technology" edited by Choyke, et al., there has been impressive progress in both the fundamental and developmental aspects of the SiC field. So there is a growing need to update the scientific community on the important events in research and development since then. The editors have again gathered an outstanding team of the world's leading SiC researchers and design engineers to write on the most recent developments in SiC.