Paper NS-ThP13
Guide for Optical Observation of Quantum Confinement or Quantum Size Effects at Room Temperature

Thursday, October 18, 2007, 5:30 pm, Room 4C

Although quantum confinement effect and quantum size effects are often considered low temperature phenomena, quantum confinement has been observed by ellipsometry at room temperature. This presentation will review examples of the observation of nanoscale effects at both low and room temperature. For example, the shift in the E1 critical point of thin silicon on insulator films has been sown to be due to quantum confinement and to roughly follow a 1/L^2 trend.¹ XPS has also observed quantum size effects for multi-monlolayer Al on Si(111).² Often, effect are seen despite the shift being less than the thermal energy, KT. Despite this, attempts to observe theoretically predicted resonances in the IR region of thin, polycrystalline TiN films failed. Based on this information we will propose some guides for when these effects can be observed at room temperature.

¹J. Price and A.C. Diebold, J. Vac. Sci. Technol. B24, (2006), pp2156 - 2159.
²Abella, et al, Phys. Rev. Lett. 87, (2001) p156801.