Characterization and light-emitting properties of Au/SiOx/p-Si and Au/Ni-implanted-SiOx/p-Si structures

Abstract SiO x layers were fabricated by thermal evaporation of SiO powders onto p-type Si(100) substrates at 200°C to investigate the electrical and light-emitting properties of the layers. After deposition, Ni ions of 70 keV were also implanted into SiO x layers at room temperature. Then both of the as-deposited and as-implanted samples were annealed in N 2 ambient for 2 h at 500°C. Violet photoluminescence (PL) due to radiative defects was observed from all the SiO x samples but annealed ones showed more intense PL than unannealed samples. Red electroluminescence (EL) was obtained from the SiO x in metal–insulator–semiconductor (MIS) structures and the annealed SiO x layers also exhibit more intense EL than unannealed layers. Particularly, the SiO x annealed after Ni-implantation showed the most intense EL which may be caused by highly concentrated radiative defects in the implanted SiO x .