Formation and coarsening of sponge-like Si-SiO2 nanocomposites

It has been recently found by energy filtered transmission electron microscopy (EFTEM) that metastable SiOx≈1 films decay into a Si nanowire network embedded in SiO2 by spinodal decomposition during thermal treatment. To have a guideline for nanocomposites fabrication, details of the morphology evolution have been studied by comparison of EFTEM images with kinetic Monte-Carlo (kMC) simulations. Pair correlation functions calculated by kMC have been adjusted to that extracted from EFTEM. This comparison leads to the conclusion about characteristic lengths of 3D morphologies. Combining kMC with EFTEM delivers the understanding for tailoring the properties like quantum confinement of the spongy Si.