Electric, thermal, and optical properties of severely deformed Si processed by high-pressure torsion

We report on electric, thermal, and optical properties of Si subjected to severe plastic deformation. Single-crystalline Si wafers were processed by high-pressure torsion (HPT) under a nominal pressure of 6 GPa. The HPT-processed samples consisted of metastable body-centered-cubic Si-III and rhombohedral Si-XII as well as diamond-cubic Si-I and amorphous phases. The metastable phases increased with increasing the number of anvil rotations ( N). The resistivity of the single-crystalline Si (20 Ω cm) increased to 50 Ω cm after HPT processing for N = 10 and then it decreased to ∼0.7 Ω cm when increasing N to 100. Such an increase and a subsequent decrease in resistivity were attributed to the grain refinement and the increase in the volume fraction of semimetallic Si-III, respectively. The thermal conductivity was reduced by two orders of magnitude (∼3 W m−1 K−1) after HPT processing for N ≥ 50. A weak broad photoluminescence peak originating from Si-I nanograins appeared in the visible light region after annealing at 600 °C. These results indicate that the resistivity, thermal conductivity, and photoluminescence of the HPT-processed Si strongly depend on the formation of metastable phases and grain refinement, which are induced by shear strain under high pressure.