Ultrabroadband terahertz conductivity of Si nanocrystal films

The terahertz conductivity of silicon nanoparticles embedded in glass with varying density is studied with ultra-broadband terahertz spectroscopy on picosecond time scales following fs optical excitation. The transition from relatively isolated charge carriers to densities which allow inter-particle transport is clearly observed. For the times immediately following carrier injection, we observe Drude-like long range transport that is rapidly replaced with a localized response on picosecond time scales. The localized response can be very well described by a phenomenological Drude-Smith model, verifying the applicability of this simple model to the conductivity of nanoparticle ensembles over the entire THz spectral window. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4767145]