Photoluminescence properties of silicon nanocrystals grown by nanosecond laser ablation of solid-state targets in an inert gas atmosphere

Abstract

It was found that the photoluminescence intensity decay kinetics of nanocrystalline silicon layers formed by nanosecond laser ablation of crystalline silicon targets in a helium atmosphere exhibit a power-law behavior with an exponent from 0.9 to 1.5, depending on the temperature and luminescence photon energy in the range of 1.4–1.8 eV, which indicates photoexcited carrier recombination controlled by dissipative tunneling processes in silicon nanocrystal ensembles in a suboxide matrix.