Si/SiO2 Multilayers
Multilayer structures consisting of Si/SiO2 are used in 3rd generation solar cells. Quantum confinement in the Si layers is used to tune the effective band gap to the desired size enabling an absorption of UV light while minimizing relaxation losses at the same time. The transmission electron micrograph clearly shows that continuous layers of Si and SiO2 with thicknesses down to 3nm can be grown.
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Steep Slope Transistors
Tunnel FETs (TFET) with a superior switching behavior have been intensively investigated in recent years since they allow realizing energy efficient logic circuits. Optimization of the device performance is studied both experimentally as well as with simulations at our institute. The image shows the local density of states in a TFET enabling a high tunneling current to flow from source to the channel. .
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Solar Cell’s Surface Texturing
The surface of solar cells is usually textured in order to suppress specular reflection of incident light yielding a significantly improved light to electricity conversion efficiency. The image shows a scanning electron micrograph of a typical texturing of a crystalline silicon solar cell.
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Semiconductor Nanostructures
Patterning semiconductors into nanostructures allows tailoring the electronic and mechanical properties of the material. Our institute operates a clean room facility for the fabrication and characterization of a large variety of different nanostructures based on different semiconducting materials.
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Latest
IHT Member awarded at the SiliconPV 2012 Conference
From 3rd till 5th of April the 2nd International Conference on Silicon Photovoltaics (SiliconPV 2012) took place in Leuven, Belgium. More than 200 abstracts from more than 20 countries worldwide have been handed in for review, 35% more than 2011. The paper "Generation of Defect-Related … Read More...
Research Highlights
Properties of Metal-Graphene Contacts
Utilizing a dual-gate field-effect transistor (FET) device, we were able to deliberately adjust an energetic separation between the Fermi level and the Dirac point in the contact areas of graphene FETs thereby mimicking the metal induced doping effect. A back-gate voltage sweep enables identifying … Read More...