Charge properties and currents in the silicon/nanoparticles of zinc oxide heterostructure irradiated by the solar light

Silicon/zinc oxide heterostructures have shown themselves to be promising for use in photovoltaics. This paper presents the results of modeling the charge properties and currents in a Si/nanosized ZnO particle with different types of conductivity under sunlight irradiation. The simulation was carried out using the Comsol Multiphysics software package. The energy diagrams of the investigated heterostructures were plotted, the charge properties and currents flowing in the structure were investigated, the dependences of the rate of generation of charge carriers on wavelength on the surfaces of silicon, zinc oxide, and at the interface between silicon and zinc oxide, the rate of recombination of charge carriers at various wavelengths of incident radiation was obtained. The regularities of the influence of wavelength of the incident radiation on the charge density and electric potential on the surface of heterostructures have been established. It is shown that the potential on the surface of the p-Si / n-ZnO heterostructure is positive, depends on the wavelength of the incident radiation and reaches the maximum of 0.68 V. For other structures, it is negative and does not depend on the wavelength: n-Si / p-ZnO –0.78 V, p-Si / p-ZnO –0.65 V, n-Si / n-ZnO –0.25 V.

Electronically reconfigurable complex oxide heterostructure freestanding membranes

In recent years, lanthanum aluminate/strontium titanate (LAO/STO) heterointerfaces have been used to create a growing family of nanoelectronic devices based on nanoscale control of LAO/STO metal-to-insulator transition. The properties of these devices are wide-ranging, but they are restricted by nature of the underlying thick STO substrate. Here, single-crystal freestanding membranes based on LAO/STO heterostructures were fabricated, which can be directly integrated with other materials via van der Waals stacking. The key properties of LAO/STO are preserved when LAO/STO membranes are formed. Conductive atomic force microscope lithography is shown to successfully create reversible patterns of nanoscale conducting regions, which survive to millikelvin temperatures. The ability to form reconfigurable conducting nanostructures on LAO/STO membranes opens opportunities to integrate a variety of nanoelectronics with silicon-based architectures and flexible, magnetic, or superconducting materials.