Sharif Digital Repository

In contrast to graphene, which is a gapless semiconductor, graphane, the hydrogenated graphene, is a semiconductor with an energy gap. Together with the 2-D geometry, unique transport features of graphene, and the possibility of doping graphane, p and n regions can be defined so that 2-D p-n junctions become feasible with small reverse currents. This paper introduces a basic analysis to obtain the current-voltage characteristics of such a 2-D p-n junction based on graphane. As we show, within the approximation of Shockley's law of junctions, an ideal I-V characteristic for this p-n junction is to be expected  

In this paper, we have studied the effect of annealing under slightly oxidizing ambient (N2+O2) on the structural and electrical characteristics of a limited number of silicon nanoparticles embedded in an ultra-thin SiO2 layer. These nanoparticles were synthesized by ultra-low-energy (1 keV) ion implantation and annealing. Specific experimental methods have been used to characterize the ncs populations. They include transmission electron microscopy (TEM) Fresnel imaging for evaluating the distances and widths of interest and spatially resolved electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) using the spectrum-imaging mode of a scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM) to measure the size... 

Theoretical studies on the spin-dependent transmission and current-voltage characteristic in a mesoscopic system, which consists of two semi-infinite ferromagnetic (FM) leads (as source and drain) separated by a typical periodic quantum dot (QD) are presented. The calculations are based on the tight-binding model and transfer matrix method, and investigate the magnetoresistance (MR) and the spin polarization within the Landauer-Büttiker formalism. The spin-dependent transport behavior can be controlled via a gate voltage and an applied bias in the ballistic regime. The numerical results are shown for a periodic polymer chain with nonmagnetic (NM) and FM leads, and also, with two FM leads.... 

Graphene is usually synthesized through deoxygenation of graphene oxide (GO) by hydrazine as the most common and one of the strongest reducing agents. But, due to the high toxicity of hydrazine, it is not a promising reductant in large-scale production of graphene. Here, for the first time, we used melatonin (MLT), as a powerful antioxidant and a biocompatible competitor of hydrazine in reduction of GO suspension. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), current-voltage and optical characteristics of the sheets indicated that the deoxygenation efficiency of the GO suspensions by MLT and under heating in an alkaline condition for 3 h was comparable with the efficiency obtained by hydrazine in... 

Parameter extraction of the five-parameter single-diode model of solar cells and modules from experimental data is a challenging problem. These parameters are evaluated from a set of nonlinear equations that cannot be solved analytically. On the other hand, a numerical solution of such equations needs a suitable initial guess to converge to a solution. This paper presents a new set of approximate analytical solutions for the parameters of a five-parameter single-diode model of photovoltaic (PV) cells and modules. The proposed solutions provide a good initial point which guarantees numerical analysis convergence. The proposed technique needs only a few data from the PV current-voltage... 

In this paper, we present a study on the contribution of silicon nanocrystals to the electrical transport characteristics of large (100 μm × 100 μm) and small (100 nm × 100 nm) metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) capacitors at room temperature. A layer of silicon nanocrystals is synthesized within the oxide of these capacitors by ultra-low energy ion implantation and annealing. Several features including negative differential resistance (NDR), sharp current peaks and random telegraph signal (RTS) are demonstrated in the current-voltage and current-time characteristics of these capacitors. These features have been associated to charge storage in silicon nanocrystals and to the resulting Coulomb... 

Vertical copper oxide nanoflakes were synthesized on a Cu foil through oxidation in alkaline conditions. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy showed that after exposing the nanoflakes to an Escherichia coli bacterial suspension, the outermost surface of the nanoflakes was chemically reduced through the glycolysis process of the bacteria. Current-voltage (I-V) characteristics of the nanoflakes (measured perpendicular to surface of the Cu foil by using conductive atomic force microscopy) indicated that electrical resistivity of the nanoflakes increased about one order of magnitude after exposure to the bacterial suspension. The nanoflakes reduced by the bacterial suspension could also be... 

In the present work, a new structure of vertical cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL) is designed and simulated. In this structure, InGaAsP is used as the active region which is sandwiched between GaAs/AlGaAs distributed bragg mirror at the top of structure and GaAs/AlAs distributed bragg mirror at the bottom. In this work, the hole etching depth was continued down to the top of lower spacer layer while in the previous work the hole etching depth was only down to top of the upper spacer. In this way, the threshold current decrement of 76.52% and increment the power by 28% from 5mW to 6.4mW at bias current of 9mA was achieved. In this paper, device characteristics such as light power versus... 

Small high-quality Au/P-Si Schottky barrier diodes (SBDs) with an extremely low reverse leakage current using wet lithography were produced. Their effective barrier heights (BHs) and ideality factors from current-voltage (I -V) characteristics were measured by a conducting probe atomic force microscope (C-AFM). In spite of the identical preparation of the diodes there was a diode-to-diode variation in ideality factor and barrier height parameters. By extrapolating the plots the built in potential of the Au /p-Si contact was obtained as Vbi D 0:5425 V and the barrier height value φB(C-V) was calculated to be φB(C-V) D 0:7145 V for Au/p-Si. It is found that for the diodes with diameters... 

Langmuir probes (LP) are the most common diagnostics for the local measurement of very important plasma parameters such as plasma density, electron temperature, plasma potential and the electron energy distribution function (EEDF). In this paper the applicability of the first derivative Langmuir probe method in processing the electron part of the current-voltage (I-V) characteristics in IR-T1 Tokamak is reported. The EEDF at different radial positions in the edge region and Scrape off Layer (SOL) are derived and the values of the plasma potential, electron temperature and electron density are estimated. Results comparison between the first derivative method and Stangeby method shows a... 

In this paper, the characteristics of an armchair graphene nanoribbon spin FET (SFET) are investigated in the presence and absence of surface roughness, by employing a multiorbital tight-binding method along with the nonequilibrium Green's function approach. It is found that the bandgap monotonically decreases with increasing the vertical electric field, since Stark effect enhances spin-flip rate under a high vertical electric field. Furthermore, spin transport in the presence of a random potential, which is induced by the concurrent effect of the applied vertical electric field and surface roughness, is carefully analyzed. This random potential strongly scatters carriers and reduces spin... 

Memristor devices have attracted tremendous interest due to different applications ranging from nonvolatile data storage to neuromorphic computing units. Exploring the role of surface roughness of the bottom electrode (BE)/active layer interface provides useful guidelines for the optimization of the memristor switching performance. This study focuses on the effect of surface roughness of the BE electrode on the switching characteristics of Au/TiO2/Au three-layer memristor devices. An optimized wet-etching treatment condition was found to modify the surface roughness of the Au BE where the measurement results indicate that the roughness of the Au BE is affected by both duration time and... 

In this investigation, the effect of annealing temperature and concentration of gold nanoparticles on the photoelectrochemical properties of sol-gel deposited Au : TiO2 nanocomposite thin films is studied. Various gold concentrations have been added to the TiO2 thin films and their properties are compared. All the deposited samples are annealed at different temperatures. The optical density spectra of the films show the formation of gold nanoparticles in the films. The optical bandgap energy of the Au : TiO2 films decreases with increasing Au concentration. The crystalline structure of the nanocomposite films is studied by x-ray diffractometry indicating the formation of gold nanocrystals in... 

We investigate the underlying physics of degradation/recovery of a metal/n-CdTe Schottcky junction under reverse or forward bias stressing conditions. We used Sah-Noyce-Shockley (SNS) theory to investigate if the swept of Fermi level pinning at different levels (under forward/reverse bias) is the origin of change in current-voltage characteristics of the device. This theory is based on Shockley-Read-Hall recombination within the depletion width and takes into account the interface defect levels. Fermi Level Pinning theory was primarily introduced by Ponpon and developed to thin film solar cells by Dharmadasa's group in Sheffield University-UK. The theory suggests that Fermi level pinning at...