Excimer UV-Light Irradiation Effects on the Initial Formation Process of Implanted Luminescent Si Nanocrystals

Abstract

Si ion implantation was widely used to synthesize specimens of SiO2 containing supersaturated Si and subsequent high temperature annealing induces the formation of embedded luminescent Si nanocrystals. In this work, the potentialities of excimer UV-light (172 nm, 7.2 eV) irradiation and rapid thermal annealing (RTA) to enhance the photoluminescence and achieve low temperature (below 1000 ℃) formation of Si nanocrystals have been investigated. The Si ions were introduced at acceleration energy of 180 keV to fluence of 7.5 x 1016 ions/cm2. The implanted samples were subsequently irradiated with a excimer-UV lamp. After the process, the samples were rapidly thermal annealed before furnace annealing (FA). Photoluminescence spectra were measured at various stages at the process. We found that the luminescence intensity is strongly enhanced with excimer-UV irradiation and RTA prior to conventional FA at 1050 ℃. Moreover, effective visible photoluminescence is found to be observed even after FA at 900 ℃, only for specimens treated with excimer-UV lamp and RTA, prior to a low temperature FA process. Based on our experimental results, we discuss the effects of excimer-UV lamp irradiation and RTA process on the luminescence.