Resonance structure of the rate of Auger recombination in silicon nanocrystals

The rate of Auger recombination in silicon nanocrystals is calculated in the context of the approximation of the envelope function. It is shown that the dependence of the rate on the crystallite radius is an essentially unsteadily varying function with characteristic variations within three or four orders of magnitude. The maximum rates of Auger recombination in silicon are reached at certain "resonance" nanocrystal dimensions, such that the energy of the basic interband transition coincides with the energy of some intraband transition.