Synthesis of Optoelectronic Nanostructures on Silicon and Gold-Coated Silicon via High-Intensity Laser Pulses at Varied Pulse Durations

This work defines the generation of nanostructures on silicon and gold-coated silicon substrates by tuning the pulse duration of our proposed method: ultra-short laser pulses for in situ nanostructure generation (ULPING) under ambient conditions. The method is a single-step novel method which is efficient in synthesizing nanostructures on the substrates. We observed a higher nanofiber generation at a shorter pulse duration using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) imaging. Silicon oxide formation was confirmed by Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis and a band gap of 8.19 eV was achieved for the Si + Au sample, which was determined by the Reflection Electron Energy Loss Spectroscopy (REELS) spectra. A high valence band offset of 4.93 eV was measured for the silicon-based samples for the Si/SiO2 interface. The addition of gold nanoparticles decreased the band gap and we observed a blue shift in optical conductivity for samples with nanofibers using optical spectroscopy.