Optical behaviour of Er doped rutile by ion implantation

Rutile single crystals were implanted at room temperature with fluences of 5 × 1015 Er+/cm2 ions with 150 keV energy. Rutherford backscattering/channeling along the 〈0 0 1〉 axis reveals complete amorphization of the implanted region. Photoluminescence reveals the presence of an optical centre close to the intra-ionic emission of Er3+ in the as-implanted samples. After annealing at 800 °C in air no changes were observed in the aligned RBS spectrum. On the contrary, annealing in reducing atmosphere (vacuum) induces the epitaxy of the damage layer. These results are unexpected, since for implantations of other ions under the same conditions, epitaxial recrystallization of the damage region occurs at this temperature. On the other hand, photoluminescence studies show the presence of new Er-related optical centres with high thermal stability in the samples annealed under oxidizing conditions. Annealing at 1000 °C in vacuum leads to the complete recrystallization of the damaged region. At this temperature a large fraction of Er segregates to the surface.