Investigation of Ge nanocrystal formation in SiO2-Ge-SiO2 sandwich structure

Abstract

The photoluminescence (PL) and Raman characteristics of rapid thermal annealed SiO2-Ge-SiO2 trilayer structure are presented. The etching experiments showed that the PL originates from the oxide layers whereas the Raman peaks arises from the Ge layer. It is suggest that the PL peak originated from Ge being introduced into the SiO2 network and it is more likely to be due to Ge-related defects in the oxide layers.