Blue-green luminescence and SERS study of carbon-rich hydrogenated amorphous silicon carbide films with multiphase structure
✍ Scribed by Li, Zhe ;Zhang, Jun ;He, Haiyan ;Bian, Juncao ;Zhang, Xiwen ;Han, Gaorong
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2010
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 307 KB
- Volume
- 207
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0031-8965
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✦ Synopsis
Abstract
The carbon‐rich hydrogenated amorphous silicon carbide (a‐Si~1−x~C~x~:H) films were deposited by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition using silane (diluted to 10% in hydrogen) and ethylene as the gas sources. To observe surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS), some samples were prepared on sputtered Ag films on Si substrates. A variety of techniques including ellipsometer, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, Raman scattering, scanning electron microscope, and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy were used to characterize the grown films. With enormous enhancement in Raman spectral intensity of carbon related phases and SiC bonds, SERS is proved to be a powerful method to investigate carbon‐rich a‐Si~1−x~C~x~:H films. Multiphase structure of the grown a‐Si~1−x~C~x~:H films is confirmed which possesses hydrogenated sp^3^ SiC network and sp^2^ amorphous carbon clusters. Blue–green multiband PL are observed at room temperature. A possible PL mechanism is suggested: the PL originates from exciton‐like and geminate recombination of excited electron–hole pairs through localized tail states within sp^2^ clusters and gap states related to sp^3^ SiC network.