Luminescence of silicon nanostructured by irradiation with heavy ions

Abstract The ion-beam formation and luminescence properties of nanosystem consisting of silicon nanocrystals within amorphous silicon are investigated. The system is produced with Kr+ (80 keV) irradiation. The appearance of the nanocrystals confined by overlapped amorphous regions (formed up along ion tracks) is simulated by the Monte-Carlo method. It is shown that the system exhibits the luminescence spectrum with the peaks that are characteristic for amorphous silicon and silicon nanocrystals, respectively. The changes of luminescence spectra with dose and with measuring temperature are presented.