Effects of ion implantation and thermal annealing on the photoluminescence in amorphous silicon nitride

When amorphous silicon nitride films are irradiated by a KrF excimer laser, they exhibit broad photoluminescence (PL) centered around 2.4 eV. The PL intensity gradually decreases and the PL peak energy shifts to a lower energy with an increase of the implanted dose of Ar+ ions. This means that the PL consists of two components with peak energies at 2.66 and 2.15 eV and that implantation-induced defects such as vacancies are not the PL centers. The PL intensity is found to decrease if the film was thermally annealed, while the decreased PL intensity of the ion-implanted film recovers by the thermal annealing. Based on these results, it is concluded that the defects generated by hydrogen release or bond breaking act as nonradiative recombination centers that quench the PL.