Kinetics of Hydrogen Generation from Oxidation of Hydrogenated Silicon Nanocrystals in Aqueous Solutions.

Hydrogen generation rate is one of the most important parameters which must be considered for the development of engineering solutions in the field of hydrogen energy applications. In this paper, the kinetics of hydrogen generation from oxidation of hydrogenated porous silicon nanopowders in water are analyzed in detail. The splitting of the Si-H bonds of the nanopowders and water molecules during the oxidation reaction results in powerful hydrogen generation.

Silicon-Based Optoelectronic Tongue for Label-Free and Nonspecific Recognition of Vegetable Oils.

A special electronic tongue system based on photoelectric measurements on Si-Si/SiN sensitive structures is reported. The sensing approach is based on measuring of minority carrier lifetime in silicon-based substrates using microwave-detected photoconductance decay. This inexpensive and environmentally friendly combinatorial electronic sensing platform is able to create characteristic electronic fingerprints of liquids, detect, and recognize them.

Might silicon surface be used for electronic tongue application?

An electronic tongue concept based on 2D mapping of photogenerated charge carrier lifetimes in silicon put in contact with different liquids is reported. Such method based on intrinsic sensitivity of the silicon surface states to the surrounding studied liquids allows creation of their characteristic electronic fingerprints. To increase recognition reliability, a set of characteristic fingerprints for a given liquid/silicon interface is proposed to be recorded at different bias voltages.

Plasmon-enhanced nonlinear optical properties of SiC nanoparticles.

An original plasmonic nano-Ag/SiN(x) substrate was elaborated to strongly enhance the nonlinear response of SiC NPs for the first time. A plasmon-induced two order of magnitude increase of second-harmonic generation and two-photon excited photoluminescence was experimentally achieved. The measured enhancement factors were correlated with local field intensities theoretically estimated by finite-difference time-domain calculations.

Nanostructured silicon nitride thin films for label-free multicolor luminescent cell imaging.

The application of nanostructured luminescent silicon nitride (SiN(X)) thin films for label-free cell imaging is reported for the first time. Different strong local fields ensured by various molecules concentrated in various cell compartments can lead to the creation of preferential electronic conditions for radiative recombination of photogenerated charge carriers via a given electronic channel. Thus, highly contrasted multicolor luminescent cell imaging under one photon excitation becomes possible.