Grouped nanostructured units system forming a metamaterial

Method of manufacturing a nanoscale system encompassing nanoscale units that are grouped and conditioned in an arrangement in the form of a buried nanoscale silicon layered system inside a silicon material of an all-silicon light-to-electricity converter, forming a new material phase by a modulation of the conventional Si material due to nanoscale trans-formations leading to an artificial matter as a meta-material nanolayer, which is built from conditioned nanoscale units inserted in semi-conductor crystalline lattice and adapted by in-tense physical fields working together, such as stress field, electric field and heavy impurity doping, characterized as follows:

• A. forming a metamaterial, nanostructured artificial matter and conditioning functionality of elementary units created and formed inside the silicon according to the succeeding steps:
• a. step of PN junction creation assuming a unidirectional functioning of conditioned nanoscale units as an energy valve and a geometry space valve,
• b. first step of impurity doping to form heavily doped zones with an initial n-type doping profile (e.g., phosphorous) shaped by the so-called low-temperature thermal P diffusion at T<1000° C. in the homogeneously lightly or moderately p-type doped wafer e.g., pre-doped by boron or by another method from a surface source or an implanted impurity doping source,
• c. second step of impurity doping leading to heavily doped local zones using a doping implantation during amorphization or as an additional process finalizing previous doping, e.g. obtained by diffusion,
• d. step of amorphization preceded by the fact that the previous n-type doping (P) is next followed by an ion implantation up to local or buried amorphization (P, Si) by the use of an ion implantation or other suitable irradiations as an electron beam,
• e. step of creation of secondary generation centers by shifting out two Si atoms from an elementary cell of Si crystalline structure by using relatively low energies per displaced atom (about 2.5 eV/atom) by focalized energy beams as ion beam or electron beam to form a system of two interacting vacancies called divacancy having prolonged electron bonds that can capture and localize electrons to build a conditioned nanoscale unit;
• said nanoscale unit becomes technically useful in that it contains permanently four captured electrons where one of them is weakly bonded in a heavily n-type doped material, e.g., provided with the high phosphorous doping (Si:P),
• f. step of placing sufficiently numerous and well distributed conditioned nanoscale units in a well-defined nanospace,
• g. step of buried amorphous nanovolumes produced with rough or rugged a-Si/c-Si heterointerfaces and small a-Si inclusions in c-Si and c-Si inclusions in a-Si, that are unfashioned or even harmful before a subsequent annealing cycle,
• h. step of thermal treatment of the buried Si amorphization using an annealing cycle performed preferentially at about 500-550° C. which dilutes small a-Si inclusions in c-Si and c-Si inclusions in a-Si, which takes the form of a solid state epitaxy and leads to clear separation of both silicon phases (crystalline and amorphized) as well as to sharp a-Si/c-Si heterointerfaces,
• i. step of spatial localization of conditioned nanoscale units suited for incident photons to be converted, preferentially by placing them within the upper region of the semiconductor wafer,
• j. step of bringing together a specific and useful set of electron energy levels that complete the fundamental Si energy bands for an efficient photoconversion by locally concentrated, numerous and ordered conditioned nanoscale units placed within a n-type heavily doped semiconductor material, e.g., provided with doping (Si:P),
• k. step of placing the above mentioned conditioned nanoscale units within the crystalline <c-Si> phase that are sufficiently numerous and well distributed in a well-defined nanospace by means of a solid state epitaxy that leads to clear separation of both silicon phases, crystalline and amorphized, as well as to sharp and flatten a-Si/c-Si heterointerfaces,
• l. step of annealing cycle that leads to the creation of nanolayers that are smoothly wrapping the each amorphization in order that nanolayers are 3 to 10 nm thick and uniform, without any faults and inequalities,
• m. step of conditioning the dense population of conditioned nanoscale units by superimposing physical effects that are two intense built-in physical fields:
• electrical and mechanical, previously performed doping, allowing the quasi-permanent doubly negative charge-state of conditioned nanoscale units due to the heavily doping the zone occupied by them and the space surrounding this zone to render locally an n-type behavior allowing two different electron transport mechanisms in and out of conditioned nanoscale units;
• out by the conduction band and in by the impurity band,
• n. step of insertion of a unipolar conduction involving simultaneously the impurity and the conduction bands,
• o. step of assuming an ultra-fast recharging of conditioned nanoscale units due to an electron conduction through the impurity band,
• p. step of conservation and protection of secondary generation centers to preserve the population of conditioned nanoscale units for any period of temperature rising during the technological processing of the converter,
• q. step of surface treatment—pre conditioning of the wafer surface after processes of diffusion or doping implantation to allow a good control of the processed volume.
• B. conditioning functionality of the nanolayer of metamaterial encompassing conditioned nanoscale units, formed inside the silicon according to the following steps:
• a. step characterized in that the metamaterial encompassing conditioned nanoscale units is advantageously placed nearby to the front face of the converter in close connection with converted light wavelengths, i.e. within the upper part of the emitter,
• b. step characterized in that appropriate reservoirs of conditioned nanoscale units are amorphizations inserted within the emitter by a modulation of the conventional crystalline material due to nanoscale transformations in order to form an ordered super-lattice,
• c. step characterized in that the density and the number of grouped conditioned nanoscale units are controlled,
• d. step characterized in that the insertion of nanostructured units is conditioned in an arrangement inside a silicon material due to advantageously applied stress field, electric field, and heavy impurity doping resulting from deposition of the focused energy required,
• e. step characterized in that the buried amorphizations are wrapped around with a nano-layer grafted with conditioned nanoscale units and immersed in various physical fields present at the a-Si/c-Si heterointerface,
• f. step characterized in that the delimitation of the nanoscale system is done by nano-membranes which are semiconductor heterointerfaces usefully oriented at which semiconductor features change such as i) main electron transport mechanism varies from rather bipolar to rather unipolar and vice versa or ii) electrons pass from one to another electron energy level set, or iii) metamaterial volume delimitations result from the superposition of the two different material phases, e.g. crystalline and amorphized, or iv) the defect stuffed volume passes into the defect free volume or v) localized physical fields e.g. strain and electric fields is maximal or negligible,
• g. step characterized in that semiconductor interfaces are determined within the crystal-line material by a vanishing built-in electric field or mechanical field;
• the c-Si/<c-Si> interface appearing between on the one side relaxed Si (c-Si) and on the other side a derived crystalline material determined under stress by a built-in mechanical field (<c-Si>) from dilatation effect due to the amorphization and a suitable thermo dynam-ical cycle;
• the <c-Si>/a-Si interface appearing between the derived crystalline material (<c-Si>) and amorphized material (a-Si), both under the built-in mechanical field resulting from dilatation effect.