Effect of post-annealing in oxygen atmosphere on the photoluminescence properties of nc-Si rich SiO2 films

Origin of photoluminescence in nanocrystalline Si:H films

“…The origin of PL are caused by the Si-O effects in the surface oxide layer of nc-Si film [38]. Very recently, Bi et al [39] studied the effect of post-annealing in oxygen atmosphere on the PL properties of nc-Si-rich SiO 2 films. In their experiments annealing was preformed in an oxygen free atmosphere, then oxygen is introduced as a postannealing atmosphere in order to modify the interface of nc-Si and clarify the correlation between the light emission and interfacial Si-O bonds.…”

“…They found that the PL properties change dramatically depending on conditions in the both steps of the annealing process, and concluded that the post-annealing mainly serves as both a passivation and an oxidation process at the nanocrystal interfaces which is supported by PL and Raman spectrum. They suggest that oxygen may be a more stable passivating atmosphere for SiO x films annealed in N 2 at high temperatures instead of H 2 [39].…”

Influences of annealing temperature on the optical properties of SiOx thin film prepared by reactive magnetron sputtering

“…These properties make it possible to fabricate graded refractive index optical films with SiO x , which could be applied in the fabrication of wideband antireflection coatings [11], wideband reflection mirrors [4,12] and rugate filters [13]. A recent interest in Si-rich SiO x films arises from the possibility of obtaining Si nanoinclusions in a SiO x matrix, which may emit visible photoluminescence according to the quantum confinement effect [14][15][16][17][18][19][20].…”

“…Amorphous SiO x phase can be separated into crystalline silicon nano-particles and non-crystalline silicon oxide matrix at heat treatment temperatures higher than 400 8C [14][15][16][17][18][19][20]. This should be related to the multivalent property of the silicon element.…”

“…This should be related to the multivalent property of the silicon element. This kind of phase separation does not only change the microstructure and composition of the material, but also changes the physical properties, such as photoluminescence [14][15][16][17][18][19][20] and infrared optical properties [14], etc. For example, the position and intensity of the photoluminescence peaks are strongly depends on the annealing temperature of the SiO x films [15]; and the IR absorption bands in the 1000-1080 cm À1 shift to higher wave numbers as the annealing temperature increases [14].…”