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Silicon Allotropy and Chemistry at Extreme Conditions

MetadataDetails
Publication Date2016-08-01
JournalEnergy Procedia
AuthorsOleksandr O. Kurakevych, Yann Le Godec, Wilson A. Crichton, Timothy A. Strobel
InstitutionsCentre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Carnegie Institution for Science
Citations6

Silicon is essential for today’s electronics because of its ability to show various electronic behaviors that are relevant to numerous fields of cutting-edge applications. It is not a pollutant and, therefore, an ideal candidate to replace the actual materials in photovoltaics, such as compounds based on the arsenic and heavy metals. However, conventional diamond-like Si is an indirect gap semiconductor and cannot absorb solar photons directly. This justifies intensive theoretical and experimental research for the direct-bandgap forms of silicon. Our recent high-pressure studies of the chemical interaction and phase transformations in the Na-Si system, revealed a number of interesting routes to new and known silicon compounds and allotropes. The pressure-temperature range of their formation is suitable for large-volume synthesis and future industrial scaling. The variety of properties observed (e.g. quasi-direct bandgap of open-framework allotrope Si24) allows us to suggest future applications.

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