2025/04/21 by Swarnava Ghosh, Markus Eisenbach, Ghosh, Swarnava +1
Materials Science · #FOS: Physical sciences #Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) #Silicon Nanostructures and Photoluminescence
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2504.15433
openalex publication_date 2025/04/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Silicon quantum dots are nanomaterials that are attractive candidates for photovoltaic applications. Doping of these materials creates p-n junctions and is important for solar cells. In this work, we present a first-principles study of the coupled influence of doping and strain on the stability, energy gap, Fermi level, electronic density, and density of states of hydrogen-passivated silicon quantum dots. We find that the cohesive energy and the energy gap decrease with increasing quantum dot size and are strongly influenced by strain. Furthermore, the response to strain also depends on the size of the quantum dot and dopant type. We present expressions of cohesive energy and energy gap as power-law of size and polynomial dependence on strain. We also show that the Fermi energy increases with size for pristine and p-type doping but decreases with size for n-type doping. We also discuss the influence of strain and dopant type on the density of states and electron density of the quantum dots.