During the past decades, owing to silicon nanomaterials' unique optical properties, benign biocompatibility, and abundant surface chemistry, different dimensional silicon nanostructures have been widely employed for rationally designing and fabricating high-performance fluorescent sensors for the detection of various chemical and biological species. Among of these, zero-dimensional silicon nano...

Porous silicon samples have been reduced in nanometric particles by a well known industrial mechanical process, the ball grinding in a planetary mill; the process has been extended to crystalline silicon for comparison purposes. The silicon nanoparticles have been studied by X-ray diffraction, infrared spectroscopy, gas porosimetry and transmission electron microscopy. We have estimated crystal...

Owing to its simplicity and low temperature conditions, magnesiothermic reduction of silica is one of the most powerful methods for producing silicon nanostructures. However, incomplete reduction takes place in this process leaving unconverted silica under the silicon layer. This phenomenon limits the use of this method for the rational design of silicon structures. In this effort, a technique ...

Amorphous hydrogenated carbons and their alloys with silicon are discussed as candidate carriers of Extended Red Emission. In this respect, their photoluminescence spectra are too blue, weak and broad. By contrast, crystalline nanoparticles of pure silicon are shown to satisfy the constraints of available observations. Such dust can plausibly condense, even in carbonrich circumstellar shells, i...

UNLABELLED Inkjet printing technique is exploited for the synthesis of Ag nanoparticles (NPs) patterned on electrochemically etched silicon-based substrates. The nanostructure morphology, here analyzed by scanning electron microscopy, is dictated by the ink composition and the printing parameters. Under suitable excitation conditions, resonant surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) performed ...

Silane-based plasmas are widely used to deposit nanostructured silicon thin films or to synthesize silicon nanoparticles. Dust particle formation in Ar/SiH4 plasmas is a continuous phenomenon: as long as silane precursors are provided, new dust generations are formed. Successive generations can be monitored thanks to various electrical (Vdc/3H) and optical (OES, video imaging) diagnostics. Expe...

Biofunctionalized silicon quantum dots were prepared through a one step strategy avoiding the use of chemical precursors. UV-Vis spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy and HAADF-STEM prove oligonucleotide conjugation to the surface of silicon nanoparticle with an average size of 4 nm. The nanoparticle size results from the size-quenching effect during in situ conjugation. Photoemissive properties, co...

Silicon core-hollow carbon shell nanocomposites with controllable voids between silicon nanoparticles and hollow carbon shell were easily synthesized by a two-step coating method and exhibited different charge-discharge cyclability as anodes for lithium-ion batteries. The best capacity retention can be achieved with a void/Si volume ratio of approx. 3 due to its appropriate volume change tolera...

TiO(2) nanoparticles were directly coupled with porous silicon and this novel composite material shows very strong photocatalytic activity for the degradation of Rhodamine B with high photochemical stability under visible light irradiation.

Silane-based plasmas are widely used to deposit nanostructured silicon thin films or to synthesize silicon nanoparticles. Dust particle formation in Ar/SiH4 plasmas is a continuous phenomenon: as long as silane precursors are provided, new dust generations are formed. Successive generations can be monitored thanks to various electrical (Vdc/3H) and optical (OES, video imaging) diagnostics. Expe...