Photoluminescence of Si-rich silicon nitride: Defect-related states and silicon nanoclusters

Abstract

The photoluminescence (PL) from defect-related states and Si nanoclusters was observed in the Si-rich silicon nitride films simultaneously. The weaker red-light emission of Si nanoclusters was obtained in the 1100°C annealed films with the 514.5nm excitation. Due to the quantum confinement effect, the PL peaks redshift with the increase of the excess Si concentration. Excited by the 325nm line, strong PL from N and Si dangling bond centers was observed in either the as-deposited films or the 1100°C annealed ones. The results demonstrate that the luminescence from defect-related states or Si nanoclusters is selected by the excitation energy.

(Invited) Luminescence Properties of Silicon-Rich Silicon Nitride Films and Light Emitting Devices

“…Figure 2 shows the Si 2p XPS spectra of the SRN films annealed at 1100 °C (18). The binding energy values are calibrated by using the value of contaminant carbon (C 1s=285 eV) as a reference.…”

“…XPS was performed to confirm the variance of the excess Si concentrations in different Si-rich nitride (SRN) films (18). Figure 2 shows the Si 2p XPS spectra of the SRN films annealed at 1100 °C (18).…”

“…Considering the promising properties of SiN X , we have done systematic studies on this material and its light emitting devices (15,18,19,20,21). On the basis of our previous results, the review will be given about the preparation of SiN X films, the feature of its structure and chemical composition, the origination of its photoluminescence (PL), and the fabrication and characterization of SiN X -based LEDs together with several methods on the improvement of the EL efficiency.…”

“…For example, N3 refers to a sample deposited with the ratio of NH 3 to SiH 4 equal to 3. The parameters of the deposition are summarized in Table I (15), and the details can be found elsewhere (18). Post-annealing was carried out in N 2 atmosphere at 400, 500, 600, 700, 800, 900 and 1000 °C for 30 min and at 1100 °C for 60 min, respectively.…”

Room-Temperature Near-Infrared Electroluminescence from Boron-Diffused Silicon Pn-Junction Diodes

“…Because silicon is an indirectband-gap semiconductor and fundamentally unable to emit light efficiently, achieving efficient silicon-based light sources compatible with current IC manufacturing technology has become the key issue of silicon optoelectronics. Many routes to fabricate efficient silicon light emitters have been proposed: porous silicon (Canham, 1990;Qin et al, 1996;Bisi et al, 2000;Zhao et al, 2005a,b), Si nanoprecipitates in SiO 2 Wang et al, 2007), erbium-doped Si (Ennen et al, 1983;Zheng et al, 1994;Polman et al, 1995), Si/SiO 2 superlattice structures (Lu et al, 1995), and silicon pn-junction diodes (Sveinbjörnsson, 1996;Martin et al, 2001;Ng et al, 2001;Sun et al, 2004;Lourenco et al, 2005). Among these ways, silicon pn-junction diodes have attracted much attention.…”