Theoretical model for carriers transport in nanocrystalline porous silicon films

Abstract

A quantum confinement model is proposed to explain the carriers transport in a nanowire network of porous silicon. The electron Hamiltonian is written as a sum of the longitudinal and the transversal contributions. The last one corresponds to a two-dimensional infinite cylindrical quantum well, whose energy levels determine the activation energies observed in the temperature dependence of the dark current. The model is in excellent agreement with the experimental data.