Optimizing Silicon Oxide Embedded Silicon Nanocrystal Inter-particle Distances.

We demonstrate an analytical method to optimize the stoichiometry and thickness of multilayer silicon oxide films in order to achieve the highest density of non-touching and closely spaced silicon nanocrystals after annealing. The probability of a nanocrystal nearest-neighbor distance within a limited range is calculated using the stoichiometry of the as-deposited film and the crystallinity of the annealed film as input parameters. Multiplying this probability with the nanocrystal density results in the density of non-touching and closely spaced silicon nanocrystals. This method can be used to estimate the best as-deposited stoichiometry in order to achieve optimal nanocrystal density and spacing after a subsequent annealing step.

Nanocrystal size distribution analysis from transmission electron microscopy images.

We propose a method, with minimal bias caused by user input, to quickly detect and measure the nanocrystal size distribution from transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images using a combination of Laplacian of Gaussian filters and non-maximum suppression. We demonstrate the proposed method on bright-field TEM images of an a-SiC:H sample containing embedded silicon nanocrystals with varying magnifications and we compare the accuracy and speed with size distributions obtained by manual measurements, a thresholding method and PEBBLES. Finally, we analytically consider the error induced by slicing nanocrystals during TEM sample preparation on the measured nanocrystal size distribution and formulate an equation to correct this effect.