RF power control for fabricating amorphous silicon nitride without Si-nanocrystals and its effect on defects and luminescence

•We fabricated a-SiNx without Si-nanocrystals by using PECVD.•We investigated comprehensively the defects in a-SiNx and the relation between their defects and PL by providing energy-level diagram.•We succeeded to tune efficiently the whole range of visible luminescence with one system based material.•We conclude that RF power-control provides an efficient way to tune the color.

We studied defect and luminescence properties of amorphous silicon nitride (a-SiNx) without silicon nanocrystals (Si-NC) fabricated by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition under a controlled radio-frequency (RF) power with subsequent post-annealing. The photoluminescence (PL) intensity became stronger and the central PL peak position shifted from 2.85 eV to 1.35 eV as the applied RF power decreased from 100 W to 60 W. Through the analyses of the PL and the photoluminescence excitation (PLE) spectra we classified different kinds of defect states that each sample contains. On the basis of a further analysis of the chemical states of the Si 2p and the N 1s core-levels by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, we discuss the reason that the 60 W sample contains more defect states than other samples and clarify the origin of the strong luminescence observed in the 60 W sample without Si-NC fabricated at relatively low RF power. In addition, this work shows also that the RF power control could provide an efficient way to select a color or all colors for the display devices by tuning the various kinds of defects in a-SiNx thin films.