Semiconductor nano-structures of typical size<10nm systems are of considerable current interest because of the new physics involved and potential device applications. The achievement of an efficient room-temperature light emission from Si is a crucial step toward the fully integrated Si-based optoelectronics. Er-doped silicon has special importance for optical communication systems due to the emission line at 1.54 µm.

In this work we will compare the Er³⁺ emission in Erbium doped nanocrystalline silicon thin films grown with different procedures, namely in situ doped by reactive magnetron sputtering on glass substrates under several different conditions (RF power, Er content and gas mixture composition), Hot Wire (HWCVD) and rf-PECVD with different hydrogen dilution and substrate temperature, in order to obtain different microstructures. The film structure was studied using X-ray diffractometry and Raman spectroscopy. The chemical composition was determined using RBS technique.  The undoped as-grown samples have been doped by implantation with two doses and a Gaussian profile around 50 nm. We have performed different temperatures annellaling in order to evaluate if the initial microstrutures will be important for the final state (recovering the initial size and crystalline fraction). Our samples show sharp photoluminescence (PL) spectra of Er centers with the strongest peak positioned at the wavelength 1.536 µm. We have studied also the photoluminescence behaviour with temperature and we have verified that at temperature increasing from 5K to 300K the PL measured decreases less as comparing to that usually observable in monocrystalline silicon.  Our results indicate that the kind of matrix where the nanocrystals are embedded (more or less oxygen) influences strongly the erbium emission.

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