Tin-containing nanocrystals, embedded in silicon, have been fabricated by growing an epitaxial layer of Si_{1-x-y}Sn_{x}C_{y}, where x = 1.6 % and y = 0.04 %, followed by annealing at various temperatures ranging from 650 to 900 degrees C. The nanocrystal density and average diameters are determined by scanning transmission-electron microscopy to ~ 10^{17} cm^{-3} and ~ 5 nm, respectively. Photoluminescence spectroscopy demonstrates that the light emission is very pronounced for samples annealed at 725 degrees C, and Rutherford back-scattering spectrometry shows that the nanocrystals are predominantly in the diamond-structured phase at this particular annealing temperature. The origin of the light emission is discussed.
@article{arxiv.1504.07759,
title = {Light emission from silicon with tin-containing nanocrystals},
author = {Søren Roesgaard and Jacques Chevallier and Peter I. Gaiduk and John Lundsgaard Hansen and Pia Bomholt Jensen and Arne Nylandsted Larsen and Axel Svane and Peter Balling and Brian Julsgaard},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1504.07759},
year = {2015}
}