Can we make silica luminescent?

Abstract It is still a challenge to develop optoelectronic or even photonic devices based on silicon technology. Silicon and its oxide, as well-known, do not possess direct electronic band transitions and, therefore, are not luminescent. The remaining weak light emission is based on intrinsic and extrinsic defect luminescence. Thus our investigations are extended to ion implantation, mainly to over-stoichiometric injection or isoelectronic substitution of the both constituents silicon or oxygen, i.e. by ions of the group IV (C, Si, Ge, Sn, Pb) or the group VI (O, S, Se). Such implantation produces new luminescence bands in silica layers, partially with optical electronic–vibronic transitions and respective multimodal spectra. In this context, special interest should be directed to low-dimension nanocluster formation in silica layers.