Light emission from silicon with tin-containing nanocrystals

Tin-containing nanocrystals, embedded in silicon, have been fabricated by growing an epitaxial layer of Si_{1-x-y}Sn_{x}C_{y}, where x = 1.6 % and y = 0.04 %, followed by annealing at various temperatures ranging from 650 to 900 degrees C. The nanocrystal density and average diameters are determined by scanning transmission-electron microscopy to ~ 10^{17} cm^{-3} and ~ 5 nm, respectively. Photoluminescence spectroscopy demonstrates that the light emission is very pronounced for samples annealed at 725 degrees C, and Rutherford back-scattering spectrometry shows that the nanocrystals are predominantly in the diamond-structured phase at this particular annealing temperature. The origin of the light emission is discussed.