Molecular beam epitaxial growth of Si1−yCy alloys pseudomorphically strained on the (2×1) reconstructed Si(001) has been investigated as a function of growth conditions. An important question concerns the relation between substitutional and interstitial carbon incorporation, which has a large impact on electrical and optical properties of these layers. We show that the interstitial-to-substitutional carbon ratio is strongly influenced by the growth conditions, such as growth temperature and Si growth rate. Both reduction in growth temperature and increase of the overall growth rate lead to an increase in the substitutional-to-interstitial carbon ratio. However, these changes in growth conditions can also cause some deterioration in crystal quality. The carbon incorporation behavior is well described by first order kinetics.

We investigated in detail the strain relaxation behaviour of metastable tensile-strained Si 1−y C y epilayers on Si(001) by comparing the layers before and after an annealing step using a variety of different diagnostic methods. The dominant strain-relieving mechanism is the formation of carbon-containing interstitial complexes and/or silicon carbide nanoparticles, similar to the behaviour of carbon in silicon under thermodynamical equilibrium conditions (concentrations below the solid bulk solubility limit). We did not observe any carbon out-diffusion. To grow material suitable for device applications, all carbon atoms should be incorporated substitutionally. There is only a very narrow temperature window for perfect epitaxial growth of such layers, limited on one side by the possible formation of interstitial carbon complexes and on the other side by the deterioration of epitaxial growth at low temperatures. The carbon concentration should not exceed a few per cent to avoid strain-driven precipitation.

We demonstrated that the plasmonic effect can enhance the photoluminescence of the europium organometallic complex in conventional organic light emitting diodes stack from an anode to emissive layer with solution processing. The aggregated gold nanoparticles (A-Au NPs) were incorporated in poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrenesulfonate) layer to increase the luminescent quantum efficiency of the emissive layer. An enhancement of 31% was achieved in the emission intensity at 614 nm for samples with A-Au NPs. The reduced exciton lifetime measured by time-resolved photoluminescence comply with the Purcell effect. These improvements are attributed to the localized surface plasmon of A-Au NPs increasing the electric dipole transition rate from Eu 3+ ions.Index Terms-Europium, photoluminescence, plasmons, rare earth metals.

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