Auger processes in silicon nanocrystals assemblies

Many properties of materials often undergo significant changes in a certain size range. For example, different forms of silicon nanocrystal assemblies have relatively high photoluminescence quantum yield due to morphological and quantum size effects. This chapter describes the main decay channel for photogenerated electron-hole pairs confined in silicon nanocrystals at high levels of optical excitation. We will argue that nonradiative Auger decay processes inherently limit quantum yield of photoluminescence of this system due to efficient competition with the radiation recombination. We further discuss implications of doping of silicon nanocrystals for their light emitting properties.