Room temperature multilayer luminescent silicon nanocrystals

Silicon nanocrystals with dimensions of about 3 to 4 nm are fabricated by hydrogenationof amorphous silicon layers with thickness of about 15 nm. the strong binding of nanocrystals tothe amorphous matrix, which prevents them from showing luminescence, is broken up by a plasmatreatment process in the presence of h2, n2o, and sf6. regions with high nanocrystal density showmore resistance against plasma etching. by controlling the etching parameters such as precursor flowrates during hydrogenation and plasma treatment processes, it seems possible to realize luminescentlayers. photoluminescence (pl) studies show that nanocrystals emit light around a wavelength of550 nm. multilayer structures have been fabricated to increase the pl intensity by separating luminescentnanocrystal layers with a 5 nm-thick layer of silicon oxynitride. the entire fabrication process has beenperformed in a conventional rf-pecvd reactor offering hope for realization of cost-effective silicon lightemittingstructures. the low temperature nature of the proposed process could lead to the fabrication oflight-emitting devices on low cost substrates like glass or even plastic.