Methods to Make Silicon and Silica Luminescent

The development of adding optical functionality to a silicon microelectronic chip is still a great challenge in material research area. Silicon and its oxide are not luminescent for they do not possess direct electronic band transition. Here we demonstrate that room-temperature photoluminescence (PL) has been observed from silicon/silicon dioxide laser sintered body with its strongest PL intensity peak being at 387 nm (3.20 eV) and another peaked near 788 nm (1.60 eV). The effects of silicon/silicon oxide particle diameters and silicon contents on room-temperature PL of their laser co-sintering samples were studied. It was found that the PL peak intensity changes with the increasing silicon content.