Spectroscopic studies of Nd3+-doped silicon-rich silicon oxide films

Nd3+-doped silicon-rich silicon oxide (SRSO) single layers were grown by reactive magnetron sputtering silicon substrates. The photoluminescence (PL) properties were studied as a function of the Nd content. The PL intensity decreases due to the formation of Nd2O3 clusters when the Nd content is increased. The influence of both composition and temperature has been examined and the luminescence decays were fitted using two exponential law. At low temperature, the fast decay component, FDC (∼40 μs) was attributed to Nd2O3 clusters and the slow component, SDC (∼240 μs) was due to Nd-radiative transition. While the Nd concentration increase showed a detrimental effect on both components of the PL decays, the thermal activation of Nd3+ non-radiative de-excitation processes induced a significant decrease of the emission lifetime.