Light emission from controlled multilayer comprising of thin amorphous and nanocrystalline silicon carbide layers

The multilayer structure composed of thin amorphous and nanocrystalline silicon carbide layers (a-SiC/nc-SiC) was prepared by the helicon wave plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition technique. Scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy results show that the successive layers of a-SiC/nc-SiC is reproducible and the nanocrystalline grains can grow homogeneously for this multilayer structure. The optical emission property has been investigated by means of photoluminescence (PL) analysis. The red-shift of PL peak energy with increasing the excitation wavelength suggested that the optical emission originated from the quantum confinement effect of SiC nanocrystallites. A narrower PL band and smaller PL stokes-shifts are observed from the multilayer compared with normal nc-SiC film.