ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT: Cathodoluminescence has been used to investigate room-temperature light emission from dislocations generated by ion-implantation and abrasion using silicon carbide paper in standard Czochralski grown silicon wafers. Dislocations in the ion implanted material were generated by implantation of either boron or silicon ions to produce, after suitable thermal annealing, a thin (100 - 200 nm) band of dislocation loops typically 150 nm below the surface. Abrasion created large dislocation tangles up to 15 J.lm deep. The generation of dislocations by both ion implantation and abrasion led to the observation of room temperature cathodoluminescence peaked at a wavelength of 1154 nm. The luminescence efficiency was found to be lower for the relatively lowly doped samples than in the case of the highly doped samples when similar dislocation densities were present. We attribute the luminescence behaviour to electron-hole recombination at the dislocations themselves and propose a model for this near-band gap luminescence based on one-dimensional energy bands associated with the strain field of dislocations.
