Narrow-gap semiconductors have been used for decades in the fabrication of magnetic field sensors, such as magnetoresistors and Hall sensors. Magnetic field sensors are, in turn, used in conjunction with permanent magnets to make contactless potentiometers and rotary encoders. This sensing technology offers the most reliable way to convert a mechanical movement into an electrical signal, and is...

In general, anatase TiO2 exhibits higher photocatalytic activities than rutile TiO2. However, the reasons for the differences in photocatalytic activity between anatase and rutile are still being debated. In this work, the band structure, density of states, and effective mass of photogenerated charge carriers for anatase, rutile and brookite TiO2 are investigated by the first-principle density ...

A three-terminal spectroscopy that probes both subsurface energy barriers and interband optical transitions in a semiconductor heterostructure is demonstrated. A metal-base transistor with a unipolar p-type semiconductor collector embedding InAs/GaAs quantum dots QDs is studied. Using minorityor majority-carrier injection, ballistic electron emission spectroscopy and its related hot-carrier sca...

New phenomena arise in single-crystal semiconductors when these are fabricated in very thin sheets, with thickness at the nanometer scale. We review recent research on Si and Ge nanomembranes, including the use of elastic strain sharing, layer release, and transfer, that demonstrate new science and enable the fabrication of materials with unique properties. Strain engineering produces new strai...

We report a simple biogenic-route to narrow the band gap of TiO2 nanocrystals for visible light application by offering a greener method. When an electrochemically active biofilm (EAB) was challenged with a solution of Degussa-TiO2 using sodium acetate as the electron donor, greyish blue-colored TiO2 nanocrystals were obtained. A band gap study showed that the band gap of the modified TiO2 nano...

Experiments are described on the prism-coupled excitation of surface electromagnetic waves in one-dimensional photonic band-gap arrays. The low loss of photonic band-gap materials leads to narrow angular reflectivity resonances and high surface fields. These attributes, coupled with the ability to engineer the optical properties of photonic band-gap arrays, suggest these materials as powerful r...

Cr3Al shows semiconductor-like behavior, attributed to a combination of antiferromagnetism and chemical ordering. We present a detailed study of chemical ordering in Cr3Al. Using density functional theory within the Korringa Kohn Rostoker (KKR) formalism, we consider five possible Cr3Al structures. The chemically ordered, rhombohedrally distorted X-phase has the lowest energy and should therefo...