Concentration and Annealing Effects on Luminescence Properties of Ion-Implanted Silica Layers

The development of optoelectronic or even photonic devices based on silicon technology is still a great challenge. Silicon and itsoxide do not possess direct optical transitions and, therefore, are not luminescent. The remaining weak light emission is based onintrinsic and extrinsic defect luminescence. Thus the investigations are extended to ion implantation into silica layers, mainly onover-stoichiometric injection or isoelectronic substitution of both the constituents silicon or oxygen, that is, by ions of the groupIV (C, Si, Ge, Sn, Pb) or the group VI (O, S, Se). The samples have been used were 500nm thick thermally grown amorphous SiO2layers, wet oxidized at 1100◦C on a crystalline Si substrate. The ion implantations were performed with different energies but allwith a uniformdose of 5×1016 ions/cm2. Such implantations produce new luminescence bands, partially with electronic-vibronictransitions and related multimodal spectra. Special interest should be directed to lowdimension nanocluster formation in silicalayers. Implantations of group IV elements show a general increase of the luminescence in the violet-blue region and implantationsof group VI elements lead to an increase in the yellow-red spectral region. Comparing cathodoluminescence, photoluminescence,and electroluminescence still too small luminescence quantum yields are obtained