Optical Properties of Manganese Doped Amorphous and Crystalline Aluminum Nitride Films

Abstract

An aluminum nitride (AlN) film deposited on silicon (100) was used as the substrate for growing manganese (Mn) doped AlN film by metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOVCD). The (15.78 µm) under layer of AlN was grown at 615°C at a pressure of 10−4 Torr. The (2.1 µm) top layer of Mn-AlN was grown at the same temperature and pressure but doped with pulse valve introduction of the manganese decacarbonyl (100 ms on, 100 ms off). The film was then characterized ex situ with IR reflectance microscopy, X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy imaging, cathodoluminescence, and X-ray fluorescence. The IR reflectance measurements showed a strong (A1) LO mode for AlN at 920 cm−1 and 900 cm−1 with a shoulder at 849 cm−1. X-ray Diffraction yielded three diffraction peaks at a 2θ position of 33, 36 and 38 degrees corresponding to 100, 002, and 101 lattice planes respectively. Cathodoluminescence results show strong visible emitted light from incorporated manganese. The relative percentage of manganese to aluminum was below the detection limit (0.01 %) of the X-ray fluorescence spectrometer. Amorphous Mn doped AlN films have also been grown using a low temperature atomically abrupt sputter epitaxial system. The amorphous Mn doped AlN showed no cathodoluminescence.

Nanocrystals formation and intense green emission in thermally annealed AlN:Ho films for microlaser cavities and photonic applications

“…Recent progress toward nitride-based light-emitting diode and electroluminescent devices has been made using crystalline and amorphous GaN and AlN doped with a variety of rare-earth elements. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] The electronic structure of the rare-earth ions differ from the other elements and are characterized by an incompletely filled 4f n shell. The 4f electrons lay inside the ion and are shielded from the surroundings by the filled 5s 2 and 5p 6 electron orbital.…”

Characterization of AlN:Mn thin film phosphors prepared by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition

“…Therefore, if high-quality thin-film phosphors of this material can be fabricated, one can further expect a variety of applications like thin-film electroluminescence (TFEL), high-resolution field emission display and so on. To this effect, AlN:Mn films have been grown by several methods including molecular beam epitaxy [4], rf magnetron sputtering [5,6] and metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) [5,7,8]. Recently, we have achieved the growth of luminescent AlN:Mn films at substrate temperatures ðT s Þ ranging widely from 400 to 1050 1C by MOCVD [7,8].…”

Luminescent Holmium Doped Amorphous AlN Thin Films for use as Waveguides and Laser Cavities.

“…Amorphous nitride semiconductor films doped with rare-earth elements have also attracted interest because these semiconductors have many of the desirable qualities of the crystalline materials [4] and because of their visible luminescence [4][5][6]. These amorphous semiconductors may be more suitable for waveguides and cylindrical and spherical laser cavities because of the elimination of grain boundaries at low temperature growth.…”