Abstract
Disordered materials with new optical properties are capturing the interest of the scientific community due to the observation of innovative phenomena. We present the realization of novel optical materials obtained by fractal arrays of silicon nanowires (NWs) synthesized at low cost, without mask or lithography processes and decorated with Er:Y2O3, one of the most promising material for the integration of erbium in photonics. The investigated structural properties of the fractal Er:Y2O3/NWs demonstrate that the fractal morphology can be tuned as a function of the sputtering deposition angle (from 5° to 15°) of the Er:Y2O3 layer. We demonstrate that by this novel approach, it is possible to simply change the Er emission intensity by controlling the fractal morphology. Indeed, we achieved the increment of Er emission at 560 nm, opening new perspectives on the control and enhancement of the optical response of novel disordered materials.
Highlights
Disordered materials with new optical properties are capturing the interest of the scientific community due to the observation of innovative phenomena
We demonstrated that it is possible to obtain decorated fractal systems whose morphology can be varied as a function of the deposition angle
The Er:Y2O3 stoichiometry was verified unchanged for all the deposited samples, as confirmed by Rutherford Backscattering Spectrometry (RBS) measurements discussed in the supplementary information S1
Summary
Disordered materials with new optical properties are capturing the interest of the scientific community due to the observation of innovative phenomena. We present the realization of novel optical materials obtained by fractal arrays of silicon nanowires (NWs) synthesized at low cost, without mask or lithography processes and decorated with Er:Y2O3, one of the most promising material for the integration of erbium in photonics. We already demonstrated the realization of Si NWs with an extremely small diameter, compatible with the observation of quantum confinement effects leading to the observation of light emission at room temperature. These Si NWs are obtained by using a modified metal-assisted wet etching process[10], a preparation methodology that is at low cost, fast and compatible with silicon technology. In this paper we decorated fractal arrays of Si NWs with Er-doped Y 2O3 by an oblique sputtering process, tuning the fractal morphology according to the deposition angle and leading to an increment of the erbium emission
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