Si nano-VINe: Electrical Percolation in Quantum-Confined nc-Si:SiO2 Systems

Nanostructures, especially of silicon, are of paramount importance for new generation solar cell applications. The key material requirements for solar cells are good electrical conductivity, confinement of excitons, and a tunable band-gap that allows for tandem arrangements to absorb a maximally large portion of the solar spectrum. However, to date, existing Si-based nanostructures have addressed these requirements individually. The difficulty is that these requirements are entangled in complex ways, so an effort to improve one can lead to a major trade-offs in the others. In this study, we report on a novel silicon nanostructure, where the key advance is that we have managed to satisfy all the abovementioned requirements simultaneously: We demonstrate that the excitons are confined, the bandgap is tunable, and the electrons can freely travel along the nc-Si network.