Oxygen induced strong green light emission from low-temperature grown amorphous silicon nitride films

Abstract

Luminescent amorphous silicon nitride films were fabricated by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition at room temperature followed by thermal oxidation at 100°C. Very bright green emissions were clearly observed with the naked eye in a bright room after the samples had been oxidized. The emission peak is located at 495nm. Fourier-transform infrared absorption spectra and results of depth profiling with x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy indicate that the introduction of oxygen is of a key role in enhancing the photoluminescence intensity of the films. Emission and excitation spectra analyses suggest that the green emission is originated from the radiative recombination in the localized states related to the Si–O bonds.

Luminescent Devices Based on Silicon-Rich Dielectric Materials

“…Intrinsic emission has been also observed in SRN ilms [27][28][29][30][31]. For example, an orange emission at 600 nm was observed at room temperature and has been related to the electron-hole pairs' recombination within Si-nps [27].…”

“…For example, an orange emission at 600 nm was observed at room temperature and has been related to the electron-hole pairs' recombination within Si-nps [27]. Also, green emission has been observed in nitrogenrich silicon nitride, which was atributed to radiative recombination in localized states related to Si-O [28]. Some other authors have shown signiicant improvement of the green emission intensity using oxidized silicon-rich nitride [29].…”

A new luminescent defect state in low temperature grown amorphous SiNxOy thin films

“…However, the luminescence can be only observed in the samples annealed at high temperatures greater than 850 °C. In our previous work, we reported oxygen-induced strong green PL of its peak around 500 nm from a-SiN x O y film prepared at room temperature [17]. LED with MIS structure of Al/a-SiN x O y /ITO was successfully fabricated and emitted the intense uniform green-yellow light [18].…”

Influence of the oxygen content in obtaining tunable and strong photoluminescence from low-temperature grown silicon oxycarbide films

“…In the past decade, luminescent Si-based materials have aroused great research interests owing to their potential application in Si-based monolithic optoelectronic integrated circuits [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]. Since bulk silicon is a poor light emitter due to its indirect band gap that requires phonons for momentum conservation, a tremendous amount of research has been devoted to Si nanostructure embedded in different dielectric matrices such as silicon oxide (SiO x ), silicon nitride (SiN x ) and silicon oxynitride (SiN x O y ) [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15].…”

“…Since bulk silicon is a poor light emitter due to its indirect band gap that requires phonons for momentum conservation, a tremendous amount of research has been devoted to Si nanostructure embedded in different dielectric matrices such as silicon oxide (SiO x ), silicon nitride (SiN x ) and silicon oxynitride (SiN x O y ) [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. Although research in these system has made great progress, unfortunately, there is still a long way towards the realization of practical application.…”