What's so special about nanocrystalline semiconductors?
by Fabrizio Cleri, Pawel Keblinski
International Journal of Computational Science and Engineering (IJCSE), Vol. 2, No. 3/4, 2006

Abstract: Nanocrystalline semiconductors display unique features compared to coarse-grained microstructures and even to their monocrystalline counterparts. We contend that such peculiarities are due to: (1) the extremely large fraction of atoms located at Grain Boundaries (GBs) and (2) the 'character distribution' of GBs, which are mostly high-energy, random interfaces. Initially, we study the structure of random GBs in nanocrystalline semiconductors by means of large-scale Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations. Subsequently, the atomic structure and electronic properties of some typical high-energy GBs in Si- and C-based nanostructures are characterised by means of a semi-empirical tight-binding Hamiltonian. We show that relevant properties of nanocrystalline semiconductors containing a large fraction of high-energy GBs are quite distinct with respect to those of coarse-grained and bulk semiconductors.

Online publication date: Wed, 14-Mar-2007

The full text of this article is only available to individual subscribers or to users at subscribing institutions.

 
Existing subscribers:
Go to Inderscience Online Journals to access the Full Text of this article.

Pay per view:
If you are not a subscriber and you just want to read the full contents of this article, buy online access here.

Complimentary Subscribers, Editors or Members of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Computational Science and Engineering (IJCSE):
Login with your Inderscience username and password:

Username:        Password:          Forgotten your password?

Want to subscribe?
A subscription gives you complete access to all articles in the current issue, as well as to all articles in the previous three years (where applicable). See our Orders page to subscribe.

If you still need assistance, please email subs@inderscience.com