Photoluminescence of erbium doped microcrystalline silicon thin films produced by reactive magnetron sputtering

Microcrystalline silicon thin films doped with erbium were produced by RF sputtering and their structural, chemical and optical properties were studied by X-ray diffractometry at grazing incidence, Rutherford back scattering and optical transmission spectroscopy. The samples exhibit a sharp photolum...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Cerqueira, M. F. (author)
Other Authors: Stepikhova, M. (author), Ferreira, J. A. (author)
Format: article
Language:eng
Published: 2001
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1822/14173
Country:Portugal
Oai:oai:repositorium.sdum.uminho.pt:1822/14173
Description
Summary:Microcrystalline silicon thin films doped with erbium were produced by RF sputtering and their structural, chemical and optical properties were studied by X-ray diffractometry at grazing incidence, Rutherford back scattering and optical transmission spectroscopy. The samples exhibit a sharp photoluminescence (PL) spectrum from the Er centres with the strongest peak positioned at 1.536 microm with a full width at half maximum of about 8 nm. When the temperature varies between 5K and 300K the photoluminescence decreases only five fold, in contrast to the behaviour reported for monocrystalline silicon.