The effect of rare-earth clustering on charge trapping and electroluminescence in rare-earth implanted metal-oxide-semiconductor light-emitting devices

Abstract

The effect of rare-earth clustering in dielectric media on the electroluminescence (EL) intensity, the charge trapping and the EL quenching was investigated using the example of Tb and Eu-implanted SiO2 layers. It was shown that the increase in the REOX cluster size induced by an increase in the furnace annealing temperature resulted in an increase in the concentration of electron traps with capture cross sections from 2×10−15 to 2×10−18 cm2. This is probably associated with an increase in the concentration of oxygen deficiency centers as well as with strained and dangling bonds in the SiO2 matrix which leads to an enhanced scattering of hot electrons and a decrease in the excitation cross section of the main EL lines of RE3+ ions. For the main EL lines of Tb3+ and Eu3+ ions the relation of the EL quenching to negative and positive charge generation in the SiO2 was considered. It was demonstrated that in case of REOX nanoclusters with small sizes (up to 5 nm) the EL quenching process can mainly be explained by a defect shell model which suggests the formation of negatively charged defect shells around the nanoclusters leading to a Coulomb repulsion of hot electrons and a suppression of the RE3+ excitation. At high levels of the injected charge (more than 2×1020 e/cm2) a second stage of the EL quenching was observed which was contributed to a positive charge accumulation in the SiO2 at a distance beyond the tunneling distance from the SiO2Si interface. In case of Eu-implanted SiO2 the quenching of the main EL line of Eu3+ is mostly correlated with positive charge trapping in the bulk of the dielectric. A model of EL quenching of the main Eu3+ line is proposed.