Oxidation Induced Giant Modulation in the Luminescence of Colloidal Amorphous Porous Silicon Nanoparticles

ABSTRACTThe emission of crystalline silicon nanoparticles as well as nanowires can be tuned by varying their diameters. The diameter selection is achieved via a difficult chemical procedure that necessitates filtration which cannot be easily scaled up. Herein, we report a novel approach for producing and tuning the emission of freestanding colloidal of amorphous porous silicon nanoparticles (which should not be confused with bulk amorphous silicon nor with porous silicon) via a controlled oxidation without relying on size of nanoparticles. This oxidation increases local strain in the disordered network that causes orbital interactions which modifies the band-gap but a new hybridization.