Abstract
Near-infrared (NIR) luminescent Si-rich oxynitride nanostructures were fabricated by very high frequency plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition followed by thermal annealing. By increasing the annealing temperature from 600 °C to 1100 °C, the intensity of NIR emission can be remarkably improved by more than three times. Si nanocrystals (NCs) with diameters ranging from 2 nm to 4 nm are found to play a decisive role in the enhanced NIR emission. The PLE spectra indicate a band-to-band excitation process with a quantum confinement feature in Si nanocrystals. Combining with the infrared absorption spectra and X-ray photoelectron spectra analyses, it is suggested that the photoexcited carriers for the enhanced NIR emission mainly originate in the quantum confined Si NCs, while their radiative recombination occurs in the surface states related to N-Si-O bonds.
Highlights
Si-based light sources compatible with the mainstream complementary metal-oxide semiconductor technology are highly desirable owing to their potential application in monolithic Si optoelectronic integrated circuits [1,2,3,4,5,6]
Near-infrared (NIR) luminescent Si-rich oxynitride nanostructures were fabricated by very high frequency plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition followed by thermal annealing
Si nanocrystals (NCs) with diameters ranging from 2 nm to 4 nm are found to play a decisive role in the enhanced NIR emission
Summary
Si-based light sources compatible with the mainstream complementary metal-oxide semiconductor technology are highly desirable owing to their potential application in monolithic Si optoelectronic integrated circuits [1,2,3,4,5,6]. The previous interest was on the light emission from silicon nanostructures embedded in silicon oxide and silicon nitride systems [7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16]. The unbalanced carrier injection in light-emitting devices (LEDs) based on silicon oxide and silicon nitride systems yields a low electron-hole pair recombination probability, and lowers the electroluminescence efficiency [17]. It has been reported that silicon oxynitride in comparison to silicon oxide and silicon nitride can more effectively improve the equivalent carrier injections in LEDs and significantly increase the carrier recombination probability [21]. The mechanism of the enhanced NIR emission is discussed in detail on basis of its annealing behavior
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