Strong Er luminescence at 1.53 um in rapid thermal annealed Si-rich SiO2 layers co-implanted with Er

The Er-doped SiO2 layers containing Si nanocrystals (Si-ncs) have attracted considerable interest for more than a decade in realizing efficient light sources at 1.54 um, owing to the coincidence of the luminescence wavelength to the absorption minimum of the silicon based optical fibres.1 Although about two orders of magnitude Er luminescence has been noticed in long time annealed sputtered deposited samples,2 observation of such high efficiency in ion implantation processed samples is scarce. Recently, we have succeeded in producing such a system by a combination of sequential Si and Er implantations and rapid thermal annealing (RTA). The processing conditions have been optimized for achieving maximum Er photoluminescence (PL) at 1533 nm at the expense of a broad luminescence band peaking at ~580 nm. Spectral analyses suggest that the appearance of such visible range PL band can be explained in the light of the interfacial state mediated recombination of carriers in the Si-ncs according to the model proposed by Wolkin et al.3. The energy migration from Si-ncs to the nearby Er ions has further been manifested using time-resolved PL measurements.
[1] A. Polman, J. Appl. Phys. 82, 1 (1997).
[2] M. Fujii, M. Yoshida, Y. Kanzawa, S. Hayashi, and K. Yamamoto, Appl. Phys. Lett. 71, 1198 (1997).
[3] M. V. Wolkin, J. Jorne, P. M. Fauchet, G. Allan, and Delerue, Phys. Rev. Lett. 82, 197 (1999).