A quantitative and automated phase analysis of dual-phase (DP) steel using electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) was attempted. A ferrite–martensite DP microstructure was produced by intercritical annealing and quenching. An EBSD map of the microstructure was obtained and post-processed for phase discrimination. Band slope (BS), which was a measure of pattern quality, exhibited much stronger phase contrast than another conventional one, band contrast. Owing to high sensitivity to lattice defect and little orientation dependence, BS provided handiness in finding a threshold for phase discrimination. Its grain average gave a superior result on the discrimination and volume fraction measurement of the constituent phases in the DP steel.

Silicon nanocrystals were in situ grown in a silicon nitride film by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition. The size and structure of silicon nanocrystals were confirmed by high-resolution transmission electron microscopy. Depending on the size, the photoluminescence of silicon nanocrystals can be tuned from the near infrared (1.38 eV) to the ultraviolet (3.02 eV). The fitted photoluminescence peak energy as E(eV) = 1.16 + 11.8/d2 is an evidence for the quantum confinement effect in silicon nanocrystals. The results demonstrate that the band gap of silicon nanocrystals embedded in silicon nitride matrix was more effectively controlled for a wide range of luminescent wavelengths.

The role of the size of amorphous silicon quantum dots in the Er luminescence at 1.54 μm was investigated. As the dot size was increased, the more Er ions were located near one dot due to its large surface area and more Er ions interacted with other ones. This Er-Er interaction caused a weak photoluminescence intensity despite the increase in the effective excitation cross section. The critical dot size, needed to take advantage of the positive effect on Er luminescence, is considered to be about 2.0 nm, below which a small dot is very effective in the efficient luminescence of Er.

Amorphous silicon quantum dots (a-Si QDs), which show a quantum confinement effect, were grown in a silion nitride film by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition. Red, green, blue, and white photolumiscence were observed from the a-Si QD strictures by controlling the fot size. An organe light-emitting device (LED) was fabricated using a-Si QDs with a mean size of 2.0 nm. The turn-on vottage was less than 5 V. An external quantum effiency of 2×10−3 % was also demonstrated. These results show that an LED using a-Si QDs embedded in the silicon nitride film is superior in terms of electrical and optical properties to other Si-based LEDs.

Capacitance-voltage was investigated for amorphous silicon quantum dots (a-Si QDs) embedded in a silicon nitride as a function of dot size and nitride thickness. a-Sci QDs were grown by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition. The electron charging was decreased as the dot size was decreased. These results showed that the conduction band shift is larger than the valence band shift as the dot size decreased and, as a result, electrons are easily discharged in a-Si QDs due to the lower barrier height. For high dot-density-sample, the capacitance-voltage curves were also shifted toward the negative voltage direction when a higher forward bias was applied at forward condition due to the transfer of electrons trapped in the a-Sci QDs from the a-Sci QDs near Si substrate to those near the top metal.