Shashi Paul
De Montfort University, United Kingdom
Title: Growth of silicon nano-structures at low temperature and their application in electronic and energy related devices
Biography
Biography: Shashi Paul
Abstract
Silicon is widely used in electronic industries in a number of forms, for example: amorphous silicon is used in liquid-crystal display units; poly-silicon is used in Flash memory structures & photovoltaic solar cells and single crystals are used in C-MOS technologies. Among various forms of silicon embodiments, silicon nano-structures (for example silicon nanowires). However, before silicon nano-structures become integrated into a commercial product (for example in consumer plastic electronics or batteries), there are still major challenges to conquer. These include optimizing growth conditions, low-temperature growth of silicon nano-structures. For the growth of nano-structures, widely employed chemical vapour deposition (CVD) techniques is in practice. However, the growth temperatures relevant to this technique exceed 600oC, which results in very high thermal budgets and process is not compatible cheap and flexible substrates. Using a combination of pre-growth preparation steps and plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD), (UK patent #GB2482915), have been shown to result in the growth of silicon structures (micro and nano sized) ï‚£ 300ï‚°C. Using this process, we are able to grow silicon structures on plastic/glass substrates and have demonstrated their use in electronic and energy related devices.
