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“Background

Silicon nanocrystallites (Si-ncs) attract considerable Neuronal Signaling inhibitor interest due to Selleck HDAC inhibitor a significant transformation of optical and electrical properties in materials that contain them. These changes are caused by the quantum confinement effect [1–3]. Light-emitting Si-ncs embedded in dielectric hosts have potential applications in optoelectronic devices because of their compatibility with the existing manufacturing infrastructure for silicon integrated circuits. Among different dielectric materials, silicon oxide is the most addressed as a host for Si-ncs [4, 5]. During the last decades, the properties of Si-nc-SiO2 systems have been widely investigated. Bright luminescence in a wide spectral range at room temperature originates from recombination of excitons in Si-ncs; the variation of their sizes allows tuning of the emission wavelength from the blue to the near infrared [3–6].

In addition to the attractive photoluminescence property, these materials can be used for a new generation of solar cells [7]. Furthermore, Si-ncs embedded in dielectric matrices have regained interest as candidates for non-volatile memory applications [8]. However, because Ribonuclease T1 of the downscaling of microelectronic devices, silicon oxide met its limit as a gate material due to high leakage current. In this regard, high-k dielectrics such as ZrO2, HfO2, and Al2O3 are considered as promising gate dielectrics due to the lower equivalent oxide thickness. Also, Si-ncs embedded in such high-k host offer a wider application for non-volatile memories due to the higher performance of the corresponding devices [9, 10]. From the photonic application viewpoint, Al2O3 is an interesting host material for optical communication. The relatively higher refractive index of Al2O3 (1.73 at 1.95 eV) in comparison with that of SiO2 (1.46 at 1.