Semiconductor quantum dots are remarkable materials that possess tunable optical and electronic properties as their dimensions are on the same lengthscales as the wavelength of electrons. However, complete realization of electronic transport in these structures requires efficient coupling between individual nanoparticles, which may not be possible due to the presence of ligands as interparticle connectors. A novel structure which can circumvent this issue is a metalattice, which is a three-dimensional system of nanoparticles (meta-atoms) interconnected via necks called meta-bonds, composed of the same, highly pure material periodic on a scale of 1-100 nm. Metalattices allow precise control on the degree of quantum confinement, carrier concentration as well as the tunneling probability of electrons through them. Silicon is an attractive material for fabricating metalattices due to its well-established synthetic protocols and facile doping methods. Doping nanostructures leads to different dopant distributions and properties compared to the bulk, and study of the dopant distribution of metalattices is expected to provide us with a detailed understanding of transport phenomena in 3-D interconnected systems that possess quantum confinement. Metalattices are prepared by infiltrating the interstitial voids of close-packed silica nanosphere templates, and conventional methods of depositing semiconductors such as atomic layer deposition cannot penetrate these nanoscale voids as the molecular mean free paths are larger than the void sizes. High pressure confined chemical vapor deposition (HPcCVD) circumvents this difficulty as high pressure allows precursor molecules to attain small enough mean free paths to infiltrate these voids. A 60 nm silicon metalattice doped with phosphorus was synthesized using the HPcCVD of silane (SiH4) and phosphine (PH3) simultaneously. Atom probe tomography (APT) was then used to form an atomic map of a meta-atom region in three-dimensions after ion milling a metalattice region into an APT tip. The tomography shows that phosphorus atoms are distributed fairly uniformly across the meta-atom region with no obvious phase segregation, which shows great potential for HPcCVD in precisely controlling carrier concentration and hence electron transport in 3-D interconnected nanostructures. Further studies will enable us to develop a better understanding of such systems and eventually apply them in devices like multiple band gap solar cells.

Atom probe tomography of phosphorus doped silicon metalattice

Macromolecular Chemistry: The Second Century

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ACS Spring 2020 National Meeting & Expo

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.