Optical properties of nanocrystalline silicon embedded in SiO2

Nanocrystalline silicon embedded SiOmatrix has been formed by annealing the a-SiOfilms fabricated by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition technique. Absorption and photoluminescence spectra of the films have been studied in conjunction with micro-Raman scattering spectra. It is found that absorption presents an exponential dependence of absorption coefficient to photon energy in the range of 1.5—3.0 eV, and a sub-band appears in the range of 1.0—1.5 eV. The exponential absorption is due to the indirect band-to-band transition of electrons in silicon nanocrystallites, while the sub-band absorption is ascribed to transitions between surfaces and/or defect states of the silicon nanocrystallites. The existence of Stokes shift between absorption and photoluminescence suggests that the phonon-assisted luminescence would be enhanced due to the quantum confinement effects.