Electron-beam irradiation effects on luminescence properties in subsurface regions of single-crystalline sapphires treated with and without hydrogen plasma exposures

Electron irradiation effects on various insulating sapphires treated with and without hydrogen plasma have been investigated mainly by means of cathodoluminescence (CL) measurements. The samples examined included Be-diffusion-treated natural sapphire (BNS) and two types of synthetic sapphires grown by Verneuil and Czochralski methods. For all the samples examined, on one hand, their CL intensities of the F+-center-related emission peaked at ≈3.8 eV rapidly increased with increasing the fluences of keV electrons, and were represented roughly by exponentially saturating curves. There occurred slight blue-shifts of the F+-center luminescence other than the intensity increases for some of the electron-irradiated specimens, suggesting possible presence of two components for the F+-center luminescence. On the other hand, a hydrogen plasma exposure to these sapphires resulted in sample-dependent changes in the optical property and in the beam-irradiation effect on the F+-center CL emission. Such variations were induced most strongly in the BNS sample, whose color changed from orange to pink due to substantial decreases in the absorbance after the hydrogen plasma treatment. Furthermore, the energy positions of both the Cr3+-center luminescence peaked at ≈1.8 eV and its satellite peaks were found to slightly shift for the untreated and H-plasma-treated BNS samples after the electron beam irradiations. Possible origins of these observations are discussed.