Presentations

    Femtosecond-laser microstructuring of silicon for photovoltaic devices, at Photonics West 2006 (San Jose, CA), Tuesday, January 24, 2006:
    Photovoltaics research has recently focused on photovoltaic materials made by cheaper processes with minimal waste such as thin-films grown by chemical vapor deposition. Because silicon is the most common semiconductor material and the second most abundant element in the earth, silicon-based thin films are an excellent choice for photovoltaics. The drawback to crystalline silicon thin films is low absorption due to silicon’s indirect band gap. Thicker films increase processing costs and sacrifice efficiency due to defects inherent in the thin-films.

    We report the creation of a thin,...

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    Femtosecond laser ablation of silicon: nanoparticles, doping and photovoltaics, at Harvard University (Thesis Defense) (Cambridge, MA), Friday, April 27, 2007:

    In this thesis, we investigate the irradiation of silicon in a background gas of near atmospheric pressure with intense femtosecond laser pulses at energy densities exceeding the threshold for ablation (the macroscopic removal of material). We study the resulting structure and properties of the material ejected in the ablation plume as well as the laser irradiated surface itself.

    The material collected from the ablation plume is a mixture of single crystal silicon nanoparticles and a highly porous network of amorphous silicon. The crystalline nanoparticles form by nucleation...

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