Optical properties of amorphous silicon quantum dots (a-Si QDs) with various dot size using extended Hückel theory

A high quality amorphous silicon (a-Si) nanostructures has grown experimentally to study the origin of light emission and the quantum confinement effect in a-Si. The quantum confinement effect increases the band gap of material as the size of quantum structure decreases, which results in a blue shift in optical luminescence and energy absorption. Here we demonstrate this effect using extended Hückel method to calculate fundamental band gap and optical absorption energy of a-Si samples with various dot sizes. As result, when the dot size was decreased from 2.2 to 1.0 nm, the absorption spectra peak shifted toward higher energy from 2.278 eV to 3.856 eV.