Separation of dislocation- and erbium-related photoluminescence by time resolved studies

The luminescence of Er in silicon occurs at 1.54 μm, which is very close to the dislocation-related PL signal in silicon known as D1. Photoluminescence decay measurements have been carried out on silicon co-implanted with Er and O. Decays were recorded using a transient capture card designed in-house, and decays over nearly three decades were routinely measured with a system response time of 10 μs. The decay transient always shows a component with a decay time of up to 1100 μs, and also a component with a much faster decay time. It is shown, that the presence of the fast decay component correlates with a broadening of the signal at 1.54 μm, indicative of radiative emission due to the dislocation-related line D1, and also with the observation in electron and optical microscopy of small extended defects.