ABSTRACT
The growth of the optical communications and related industries has generated a high demand for efficient and low-cost materials to be used for functions such as light emission, detection, and modulation. Potential applications of nano scale silicon-based materials include silicon-based light-emitting devices for use in optical communications, including chip-to-chip and intra-chip optical interconnects, fully integrated silicon-based optoelectronic circuits, photovoltaic solar cells, hetero junction devices, and optical sensors. In a nanostructure, electrons in the conduction band and holes in the valence band are confined spatially by potential barriers. Light emission from silicon is an important fundamental issue with enormous technological implications. In addition, silicon-based materials with improved optical properties will find important applications in enhancing the efficiency of photovoltaic solar cells, which is a market also dominated by silicon, and which is expected to experience a tremendous growth in the near future. Silicon is a promising material for the fabrication of photonic bandgap waveguides.
