Abstract
The temperature dependence of sensitized Er3+ emission via localized states and silicon nanoclusters has been studied to get an insight into the excitation and de-excitation processes in silicon-rich oxynitride films. The thermal quenching of Er3+ luminescence is elucidated by terms of decay time and effective excitation cross section. The temperature quenching of Er3+ decay time demonstrates the presence of non-radiative trap states, whose density and energy gap between Er3+4I13/2 excited levels are reduced by high-temperature annealing. The effective excitation cross section initially increases and eventually decreases with temperature, indicating that the energy transfer process is phonon assisted in both samples.
Highlights
Incorporating rare earth (RE) ions into semiconductors and glasses has aroused much research interest in the last decades in view of potential optoelectronic applications [1]
Transmission electron microscopy measurements showed the absence of Si aggregates in the 600°C annealed sample, while silicon nanoclusters (Si-NCs) could be clearly observed in the 1,100°C annealed sample [19]
Both Er-doped silicon-rich oxynitride (SRON) (Er)- and Si-NC-related PL bands are observed simultaneously in the 1,100°C annealed sample, while the Si-NC-related PL band is absent in the 600°C annealed sample
Summary
Incorporating rare earth (RE) ions into semiconductors and glasses has aroused much research interest in the last decades in view of potential optoelectronic applications [1]. Luminescence of Er3+ ions in silicon undergoes a significant thermal quenching due to Auger de-excitation and energy back transfer processes [2,4]. To address such challenge, researchers have tried to embed Er3+ ions in hosts with larger bandgap [5], such as silicon-rich oxide (SRO) or silicon-rich nitride (SRN) [6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15]. Silicon-rich oxynitride (SRON) materials have been studied as optical platforms for erbium doping [16,17,18,19]. Er-doped SRON (Er:SRON) shows intense 1.54-μm photoluminescence (PL), and non-resonant Er excitation
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