July 2005:

"Quenching of Si nanocrystal photoluminescence by doping with gold or phosphorous" by A.L. Tchebotareva, M.J.A. de Dood, J.S. Biteen, H.A. Atwater and, A. Polman appears in Journal of Luminescence 114, 137 (2005).

Small particles of silicon, typically in the 1-10 nm range, are able to emit visible orange-red light. A well defined relation between emission wavelength and particles exists, but it is difficult to establish this experimentally. By adding gold or phosphorous to these particles it is possible to reduce the emission of the silicon particles significantly. This process depends on the probability to introduce a single gold or phosphorous atom in a silicon nanoparicles and depends strongly on the size of the nanoparticle. In principle this could be used to estimate the size of a particle that emits a specific wavelength. Unfortunately, interaction between nanoparticles obscures this simple picture which makes it difficult if not impossible to establish the relation between patricle size and emission wavelength.

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