Temperature-Dependent Photoluminescence of Silicon Nanoporous Pillar Array

Silicon nanoporous pillar array (Si-NPA) is a micron-nanometer hierarchical structure which might be used as functional substrates for constructing optoelectronic nanodevices. This makes understanding the photoluminescence (PL) from Si-NPA important. We measure the PL of Si-NPA in the range of 11–300 K. By analyzing the evolution of the peak energy and intensity with temperature, the ultraviolet, blue, orange and red PL bands from Si-NPA are attributed to the radiative recombination through the deep-levels in silicon oxide, oxygen-related defect states in silicon nanocrystallites (nc-Si), band-to-band transition within nc-Si, and surface/interface states of nc-Si or between nc-Si and SiO_x, respectively. At least two non-radiative recombination processes, which are activated at different temperature ranges, are proposed for the PL intensity variation with temperature. These results might provide strong foundations for designing and constructing optoelectronic devices based on silicon nanostructures.