A study of laser-induced blue emission with nanosecond decay of silicon nanoparticles synthesized by a chemical etching method.

Silicon nanoparticles (Si NPs), exhibiting a strong visible photoluminescence (PL), have found many applications in optoelectronics devices, biomedical tags and flash memories. Chemical etching is a well-known method for synthesizing orange-luminescent, hydride-capped silicon nanoparticles (H/Si NPs). However, a blueshift in emission wavelength occurs when reducing the particle size to exciton Bohr radius or less. In this paper, we attempted to synthesize and characterize H/Si NPs that emit lower wavelengths at room temperature. We proved that our method succeeded in synthesizing H/Si NPs with emission in the blue region. The wavelength-resolved and time-resolved studies of the PL were executed for H/Si NPs in methanol (MeOH), pyridine (py) and furan, using the 355 nm pulsed radiation from a Nd:YAG laser. In addition, excitation wavelength-dependent and PL studies were executed using the spectrofluorometer with a xenon (Xe) broad band light source. We noticed solvent-dependent PL spectra with sharp peaks near 420 nm and a short lifetime less than 100 ns. The morphology and particle size were investigated by high resolution transmission electron microscope (HRTEM). Particles as small as one nanometer were observed in MeOH and py suspensions while two-nanometer particles were observed in the furan suspension.