Study of Colloidal Suspensions of Silicon Nanoparticles: Effect of Surface Oxidation on the Photoluminescence Property

Abstract

Nanosilicon is currently under intensive research owing to its extremely promising properties, particularly in photonics domain. However, the photoluminescence (PL) mechanism of silicon nanocrystal remains unclear. We propose, in this paper, a simple method to investigate the PL properties of silicon nanoparticles by exposing the nanoparticles directly to the solvents. The interaction between the nanoparticles and different solvents allows us to assume that not only the quantum size effect but also the surface defect states play a critical role in the PL mechanism, especially at high energy region. This can be confirmed by the results of Transmission Electron Microscopy, FTIR and Raman Spectroscopy.