Photoluminescence in the silicon-oxygen system

The luminescent properties of SiOx ranging in composition between x=0 and x=2 are presented. Luminescence in the SiOx system is found to be tunable across the full visible spectrum and into the near infrared. The data are used to generate an emission color map for the complete SiOx system. At the lower annealing temperatures, several lines of evidence suggest that the luminescence is due to the presence of amorphous silicon nanoclusters, whereas for higher annealing temperatures the emission is dominated by silicon nanocrystals.