Quantum confined intense red luminescence from large area monolithic arrays of mesoporous and nanocrystal-decorated silicon nanowires for luminescent devices

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Date
2015-09-01
Authors
O'Dwyer, Colm
McSweeney, William
Collins, Gillian
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Electrochemical Society
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Abstract
We report intense red luminescence from mesoporous n+-Si(100) nanowires (NWs) and nanocrystal-decorated p-Si NWs fabricated using electroless metal assisted chemical (MAC) etching. n+-Si NWs are composed of a labyrinthine network of silicon nanocrystals in a random mesoporous structure. p-type Si(100) NWs exhibit solid core structure, with a surface roughness that contains surface-bound nanocrystals. Both mesoporous n+-Si NWs and rough, solid p-Si NWs exhibit red luminescence at ∼1.7 and ∼1.8 eV, respectively. Time-resolved photoluminescence (PL) measurements indicated long (tens of μs) radiative recombination lifetimes. The red luminescence is visible with the naked eye and the red light is most intense from mesoporous n+-Si NWs, which exhibit a red-shift in the emission maximum to 1.76 eV at 100 K. The red PL from monolithic arrays of p-type NWs with nanocrystal-decorated rough surfaces is comparatively weak, but originates from the surface bound nanocrystals. Significant PL intensity increase is found during excitation for mesoporous NWs. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy identifies a stoichiometric SiO2 on the rough p-Si NWs with a SiOx species at the NW surface. No distinct oxide is found on the mesoporous NWs. The analysis confirms that long life-time PL emission arises from quantum confinement from internal nanoscale crystallites, and oxidized surface-bound crystallites, on n+- and p-Si NWs respectively.
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Etching , Microscopy , Nanocrystal , Nanomaterials , Nanowires , Photoluminscence , Porous , Silicon
Citation
O'Dwyer, C., McSweeney, W. and Collins, G. (2016) 'Quantum Confined Intense Red Luminescence from Large Area Monolithic Arrays of Mesoporous and Nanocrystal-Decorated Silicon Nanowires for Luminescent Devices', ECS Journal of Solid State Science and Technology, 5(1), pp. R3059-R3066. doi: 10.1149/2.0081601jss
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© The Author(s) 2015. Published by ECS. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (CC BY, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse of the work in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.