White Potoluminescence Properties Of Silicon Based ZnO Heterostructure

As an indispensable semiconductor material in the manufacture of integrated circuits, silicon plays a key role in today’s science and technology production, and is widely used in the areas of computer science, information communication, and national defense, etc., ensuring and improving the quality of our life. The remarkable photoluminescence phenomenon of porous silicon has attracted the attention of the world, as it opens the door of the application of silicon in the photovoltaic industry which provides an attractive prospect to combine the optoelectronic materials and modern technology. ZnO is another important semiconductor material which has great potential due to its excellent stability, perfect luminescent and photoelectric conversion properties, and receives more and more attention in a variety of fields. The morphology and size of ZnO could be accurately controlled by the existed mature production technology, and the luminescent properties of ZnO are particularly significant when its size is in the scale of nanometer. Therefore, ZnO is an excellent luminescent nanomaterial. The silicon based ZnO hcterostructure, which is obtained by Compounding ZnO and porous silicon, combines the respective advantages of these two semiconductor materials, and shows excellent electrical, optical and photoelectric conversion properties.In this paper, our study is focused on the preparation and performance of silicon based ZnO heterostructure material. The structure analysis and performance testingare conducted for the porous silicon pillar array (PSPA), the silicon based ZnO heterostructure material and the manganese-doped material. The main contents andresults can be concluded as follows:The PSPA is prepared with the iron ions included hydrothermal corrosion method. The polished silicon surface was etched to form the structure of micron peak columnar arrays. Each column in the nanometer range is sponge structure composing of silicon quantum dots and un-uniform oxide surface-layer. The morphology, elemental composition, photoluminescence, and excitation properties are measured and analyzed in the end.Using PSPA as the substrate, the silicon based ZnO heterostructure material was prepared with liquid phase method. The morphology and size of ZnO nanomaterials are accurately controlled by the preparation conditions, and different ZnO composite layers have different luminescent properties. Benefited from the special surface structure of PSPA, the ZnO nanometer material layer is evenly distributed on its surface with a periodic array structure because the interface stress caused by lattice mismatch of these two semiconductor materials are greatly reduced. This improves the morphology of the composite materials as well as the luminescence efficiency. The structure and luminescent properties of the silicon based ZnO heterostructure material are analyzed and the luminescence mechanism is discussed.To improve the luminescence properties and the color rendering index of the silicon based ZnO heterostructure material, manganese ion was doped into the composite materials. The light emission of the composite material mainly comes from the Zinc Oxide nanometer layer, and when excited the emitted light is blue-green. The doping of Manganese ion provides new luminescence centers and levels in the silicon based ZnO heterostructure material, making the luminescence more close to the natural light, which provides more opportunity for the development of future lighting sources.