Enhanced formation of Ge nanocrystals in Ge:SiO 2 layers by swift heavy ions

I. V. Antonova*, V. A. Skuratov, V. A. Volodin, S. A. Smagulova, D. M. Marin, A. Janse Van Vuuren, J. Neethling, J. Jedrzejewski, I. Balberg

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

7 Scopus citations

Abstract

In this paper we report the ability of swift heavy Xe ions with an energy of 480MeV and a fluence of 10 12cm 2 to enhance the formation of Ge nanocrystals within SiO 2 layers with variable Ge contents. These Ge-SiO 2 films were fabricated by the co-sputtering of Ge and quartz sources which followed various annealing procedures. In particular, we found that the irradiation of the Ge:SiO 2 films with subsequent annealing at 500°C leads to the formation of a high concentration of nanocrystals (NCs) with a size of 2-5nm, whereas without irradiation only amorphous inclusions were observed. This effect, as evidenced by Raman spectra, is enhanced by pre-irradiation at 550°C and post-irradiation annealing at 600°C, which also leads to the observation of room temperature visible photoluminescence.

Original languageEnglish
Article number285302
JournalJournal of Physics D: Applied Physics
Volume45
Issue number28
DOIs
StatePublished - 18 Jul 2012

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