Luminescence blinking of a Si quantum dot in aSiO2shell

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Abstract
The phenomenon of on-off luminescence intermittency - blinking - in silicon nanocrystals was studied using a single-dot microphotoluminescence technique. From recordings of the luminescence intensity trace, on- and off-time distributions were extracted revealing exponential behavior, as expected for systems with blinking of a purely random nature. The corresponding switching rates for on-off and off-on processes exhibit different dependence on the excitation intensity. While the on-off switching rate grows quadratically with the excitation, the inverse process is nearly pumping power independent. Experimental findings are interpreted in terms of a dot "charging" model, where a carrier may become trapped in the surrounding matrix due to thermal and Auger-assisted processes. Observed blinking kinetics appear to be different from that of porous silicon particles.QC 2010092