DONNA (Doping at the Nanoscale)

The purpose of the DONNA project is to develop model systems and new approaches for efficient doping at the nanoscale. The 2 milestones are (M1) to control the insertion of active dopants inside NCs and (M2) to be able to measure this activation. The first milestone requires a strong effort on the synthesis by using new routes implying model systems and out-of-equilibrium conditions. In particular, Laser Thermal Annealing (LTA) will be employed for the dopant activation. A similar approach was already successfully applied for the fabrication of ultra-shallow junctions for source/drain doping in bulk Si. The second milestone requires the systematic use of structural and chemical characterization at the nanoscale, with advanced techniques at the forefront of the state of the art as STEM-EDS and Atom Probe Tomography for 2D and 3D mapping of the dopants inside the NCs. In addition, an all-optical technique based on the generation of LSPRs in doped Si-NCs detected using IR optical spectroscopies, will be used as a tool for active dopant concentration measurement.
Getting a comprehensive vision of the atomic phenomena involved in the doping process at the nanoscale, as it is ambitioned here, is a prerequisite step for future applications involving these nanostructures.