Nanolayers of a PV metamaterial buried within a single crystal Si: SEM and reflectivity observations

摘要

A new class of ordered structures that exhibit exceptional properties not readily observed before in nature or in the laboratory is called metamaterials. Their properties arise from qualitatively new response functions that are not observed in the constituent materials and result from the inclusion of artificially fabricated, intrinsic and extrinsic, lowdimensional components. Low-dimensional or nanostructured Si materials as, for example, nanoscale Si-layered systems combined with an active interface with its crystalline defects show new PV behavior never observed before in nature and in engineering. To observe such nanolayers buried within a Si single-crystal one has to conserve a local strain that plays an important role in the metamaterial formation. To do this, one uses techniques based on X-ray spectroscopy or more recently proposed SEM and EDS images of just cleaved edges. The microscopy results of layered structures have been compared with those obtained from reflectivity simulations from our code based on Lorentz-Drude theory and experimental reflectivity measured in integrated hemispheres. An excellent agreement can be observed