Spectral and spatial narrowing of the emission of silicon nanocrystals in a microcavity

We report on the fabrication and optical characterization of different silicon nanocrystal layers embedded in various structures: deposited on a fused quartz plate, on top of a half cavity, and embedded in a full cavity. The half and full cavity are, respectively, a mirror and a Fabry-Perot resonator, both being composed of dielectric distributed Bragg reflectors. Spectral and angular dependencies of the photoluminescence (PL) behavior have been measured. It is shown that the fabrication process does not affect the PL properties of the nanocrystals. Efficient spectral and angular narrowing is observed for the full cavity, leading to a spectral width of 13 nm and an aperture cone of 15degrees. Moreover, the cavity enhances the intensity of the vertically emitted light by a factor of approximately 20. (C) 2004 American Institute of Physics.