Radiative and Non-Radiative Processes for the light Emission from Porous Silicon

Abstract
Highly porous silicon, well passivated via an anodic oxidation process, is a stable and efficient visible light emitter showing a 3% photoluminescence efficiency at room temperature. Luminescence decay times are on the order of 100 μs at room temperature and 10 ms at low temperature. Above room temperature the de-excitation is dominated by non-radiative processes well describe by a tunnelling escape of carriers from confined regions. The “anomalous” luminescence behaviour showing a dramatic increase of the lifetimes upon cooling associated with a decrease of the intensity is explained by the temperature dependence of the effective radiative recombination rates due to a population redistribution among two excited states with very different radiative relaxation rates.