Visible cathodoluminescence from nanocrystalline GaSb obtained by mechanical milling

Abstract

The luminescence of mechanically milled GaSb has been investigated by means of cathodoluminescence (CL) in the scanning electron microscope. Transmission electron microscopy reveals that the GaSb powders obtained after the milling process contain nanocrystals with sizes of few nanometers. CL spectra of the GaSb powders show a bright blue-green luminescence visible to the naked eye, even at room temperature. Furthermore, a shift from blue to green has been observed depending on the milling time. In order to clarify the origin of this visible luminescence, we have performed a CL study on gallium oxide (Ga2O3) and antimony oxide (Sb2O3) powders, which exhibit several emission bands in the visible range. Comparison of these results with CL spectra from GaSb powders shows that oxidation during the milling process of GaSb plays an important role in the luminescence features observed.

Synthesis and characterization of silicon-doped gallium oxide nanowires for optoelectronic UV applications

“…Blue-UV emission bands in the 2.8-3.4 eV range have been reported in the literature for undoped gallium oxide by photoluminescence (PL) (Binet and 1b) and c CL spectrum from Si-doped G-2 sample (structure shown in Fig. 3) Gourier 1998;Shimamura et al 2008) and CL (Yu et al 2002;Nogales et al 2005;Borini et al 2003) and were assigned to self-trapped excitons and donor-acceptor pair transitions. Oxygen vacancies (V O ) or Ga interstitials have been proposed as donors and V O -V Ga pairs were supposed to be the acceptor centers (Binet and Gourier 1998;Harwig and Kellendonk 1978).…”

Luminescence properties of mechanically milled ZnSe

“…Ball milling method, used in this work, it is a low cost procedure, which avoid chemical contamination and can be easily implemented to produce large amounts of material. It has been successfully applied to many other semiconductor materials, like Si [8,9], Ge [10,11], ZnO [12], GaSb [13] or CdSe [14]. However, the mechanical damage induced during milling and, in some cases, the formation of oxides are drawbacks of this method.…”

Fabrication of low dimensional structures of ZnSe and ZnO by thermal and mechanical methods

“…Ball milling method, one of the fabrication methods used in this work, it is a low cost procedure, with reduced chemical contamination which can be implemented to produce large amounts of material. It has been successfully applied to many semiconductor materials, like Si [7,8], Ge [9,10], ZnO [11], GaSb [12] or CdSe [13]. The main advantage of this method is that it is a low cost way to obtain relatively large amounts of nanoparticles of practically any material in quite similar conditions.…”