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arXiv · 1608.00793

Violet emission from bulk Si prompted by surface plasmon polaritons

Ventsislav M. Lavchiev·Valerii M. Mikoushkin·Gang Chen
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Abstract

Silicon has been long known as a poor light emitter due to its indirect band gap and strong phonon-assisted decay of the excited states. Nevertheless, we have revealed efficient quasi-monochromatic photoluminescence at 368 nm from bulk silicon in the near-violet spectral range of the interband transition SiE{\Gamma}1 even at room temperature. Optical and electron spectroscopy experiments showed a clear relation of the emission to a surface plasmon polariton (SPP) located on the SiO/Si interface. The presented results demonstrate that the unveiled luminescence is an effect of creation and decay of the SPP being a mixture of the surface plasmon, light, and the bulk interband transition. The SPP evolves in the silicon layer with a thickness of the order of the near-violet wave penetration depth (~80 nm) and is characterized by high excitation amplitude due to its hybrid nature. The effect seems to be easily applicable in developing near-violet light sources based on the existing Si-technology.

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Ventsislav M. Lavchiev, Valerii M. Mikoushkin, Gang Chen. 2016-08-02. Violet emission from bulk Si prompted by surface plasmon polaritons. https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.00793

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