Trap-Assisted Transport in Silicon Nanorods

In this work, we have studied the charge transport and photoluminescence (PL) properties of silicon nanorods (SiNRs) on substrate synthesized by the electrochemical etching of p-type Si wafer. The DC current–voltage (I-V) characteristics of SiNR within temperature 100–350 K show nonlinear and asymmetric behavior. From the temperature-dependent DC conductivity measurement, activation energy of 0.78 eV has been found. The room temperature emission spectrum is characterized by the appearance of single PL band in the visible region which can be de-convoluted into two Gaussian bands. The observed phenomena are interpreted in terms of defect states in the random SiNR network.