Time-resolved photoluminescence spectral analysis of phonon-assisted DAP and e-A recombination in N plus B-doped n-type 4H-SiC epilayers

摘要

It is crucial to clarify the roles of phonon-assisted donor-acceptor pairs (DAPs) and free-to-acceptor (e-A) emissions in n-type 4H-SiC doped with nitrogen (N) and boron (B), where N and B induce the shallow donor and the D center (deep B) acceptor levels, respectively, in order to understand the complicated carrier recombination mechanism, as well as developing fluorescent SiC with a high color rendering index by controlling the ratio of the two overlapped emissions. Here, time-resolved photoluminescence (TRPL) spectral analyses were performed, in which phonon-assisted DAPs and e-A components were individually recognized. The D center-related green luminescence (1.6-2.8 eV) shows a non-exponential decay followed by a very slow decay in TRPL measurements at room temperature (RT). It emerges that most of the DAP emission intensities decay much faster than e-A emissions and contribute to what is initially fast and non-exponential decay at low temperatures, while the slow decay at RT is mainly from e-A emissions. At a much higher temperature, such as 473 K, only the e-A emission remains and the decay transforms from non-exponential to exponential behavior. High-temperature thermal quenching of e-A emissions exhibits different behaviors for samples with differing B doping concentrations. An activation energy of 0.6 eV was estimated from the Arrhenius plot of e-A emission intensity from a B-doped sample, which matches the D center level. This indicates that the hole thermal emission rate is greatly enhanced at a high temperature, which accelerates the decay of e-A emission intensity at high temperatures.