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While silicon continues to be the mainstay of nearly all electronic devices, carbon has emerged
as a material that can potentially replace silicon and usher in the next technological revolution.
Yet, the mechanisms involved in some commonly observed nanoscale phenomenon
demonstrated by silicon and carbon are still not well understood. Light emission from low
dimensional silicon and carbon is a classic example. In this talk, I will try to outline some of
the major challenges in understanding the origin of room temperature photoluminescence
from silicon and carbon based nanostructures and present some preliminary discussion on
carrier transport mechanisms through composites of these two nanomaterials. Interestingly,
we will see that both these phenomena – light emission and charge transport in
nanostructured silicon and carbon systems have remarkably similar characteristics. Does this
point towards a common origin or a general scheme that we are yet to decipher? |