Nanostructural elements of some high temperature semiconductors

Abstract

High-temperature semiconductors (HTS) with wide forbidden zones embody the very essence of materials for modern nano-electronics. Complex HTS materials based on carbon and boron provide unique structural properties. Technology for their opreparation as films is emerging in order to have their desirable electrical and physicochemical properties such as mechanical hardness and chemical resistance in convenient forms. Research conducted during the last decades of the 20th century has shown that carbon and boron crystals form clusters, of which the essential structural elements contain 4, 12, 60 or 84 atoms. The thermodynamics of these “nanoelements” decree their transformation to amorphous or crystalline films, layers and other deposits, which have some advanced properties.1,2 Clusters having a stable configuration under equilibration conditions take the forms of different geometrical figures, from triangular to dodecahedral and icosahedral.3,4 According to classical ideas of particle formation and growth, and in correspondence with the so-called atomistic process of nucleation, atoms as the ‘germ’ of the solid phase unite in aggregates (clusters) whose size is dependent on the atomic potentials.