Abstract
The efficient excitation of Er3+ ions through contact with Si nanoparticles (NPs) is demonstrated. A nanostructured doping process has been developed that leads to contact between Si NPs formed in situ and optically-active Er3+ ions embedded in Al2 O3. This is achieved by independent and consecutive deposition of the dopants and matrix. The Si NP- Er3+ contact regime enhances the probability of efficient interaction due to the local spatial overlap of the electronic states of the Er3+ and of the Si NP exciton, enabling energy transfer by interband exciton recombination. This leads to up to 53% of the Er3+ ions being excited in as-deposited films.
Original language | English (US) |
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Article number | 151109 |
Journal | Applied Physics Letters |
Volume | 98 |
Issue number | 15 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Apr 11 2011 |
Funding
This work has been partially supported by CICYT (Spain) under Project No. MAT2009-14369-C02-02. S.N.-S. acknowledges support from a FPU contract (MEC, Spain). Part of this work was carried out at U. Chicago Argonne, LLC, operator of Argonne National Laboratory (Argonne). Argonne, a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science Laboratory, is operated under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357. Use of the Center for Nanoscale Materials was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Physics and Astronomy (miscellaneous)