CW and Time-Resolved Photoluminescence Analysis of Silicon Implanted Glass Low-Temperature Annealed at Different Times

Abstract

AbstractThe effects of annealing time on continuous-wave (CW) and nanosecond time-resolved (TR) photoluminescence (PL) spectra of silicon-ion-implanted Borosilicate glass (BSO:Si+) annealing at 500°C are characterized. A broadband CWPL of the as-implanted BSO:Si+ at 450-530 nm is observed, and the luminescent peak is found to slightly red-shift after annealing for 90 min. The increasing CWPL intensity reveals that the natural oxygen vacancy (NOV, ΞSi Si-SiΞ) related irradiative defect is highly activated during 30-min annealing, however, which abruptly decreases with the annealing lengthens to 60-min or longer. The TRPL analysis indicates a non-radiative recombination process with a sub-picosecond lifetime for the blank BSO and the as-implanted BSO:Si+ samples, which gradually disappears as the BSO:Si+ is long-term annealed. The irradiative luminescent lifetime of the 60-min annealed BSO:Si+ is lengthened from 1.7 ns to 2.8 ns, which reveals that the density of the NOV defect is decreasing by at least one order of magnitude. A longer irradiative decay with nearly identical lifetime is also found in all annealed BSO:Si+. The ratios of TRPL peak intensities for different samples correlate well with those observed in CWPL measurement, however, the weighting factors of TRPL intensities for the latter two decaying components are vicissitudinous each other in different samples BSO:Si+. This interprets a significant evolution among different decaying mechanisms during the annealing process.