White light emission from silicon oxycarbide films prepared by using atmospheric pressure microplasma jet

An atmospheric pressure microplasma jet was employed as a deposition tool to fabricate silicon oxycarbide films from tetraethoxysilane-argon (Ar) mixture gas at room temperature. Resultant films exhibit intense visible emission under a 325 nm excitation which appears white to naked eyes in the range from ∼1.75 to ∼3.5 eV at room temperature. The origin of photoluminescence is attributed to the electron-hole pair recombination through neutral oxygen vacancies (NOVs) in the film. The density of NOV defects was found in the range from 3.48×1015 to 2.23×1016 cm−3. The photoluminescence quantum efficiencies were estimated to be 1.48%–4.15%. Present experiment results demonstrate that the silicon oxycarbide films prepared by using atmospheric pressure microplasma jet would be a competitive candidate for the development of white light emission devices.