Optical emission from erbium-doped silica nanowires

Infrared optical emission from erbium-doped silica nanowires is shown to have property characteristic of the material nanostructure and to provide the basis for the fabrication of integrated photonic devices and biosensors. Silica nanowires of approximately 150 nm diameter were grown on a silicon wafer by metal-induced growth using a thin (20 nm) sputter-deposited palladium layer as a catalyst. The resulting wires were then ion implanted with 110 keV ErO(-) ions and annealed at 900 degrees C to optically activate the erbium. These wires exhibited photoluminescence emission at 1.54 mu m, characteristic of the (4)I(15/2)-(4)I(13/2) transition in erbium; however, comparison to similarly implanted fused silica layers revealed stronger thermal quenching and longer luminescence lifetimes in the nanowire samples. The former is attributed to an increase in defect-induced quenching partly due to the large surface-volume ratio of the nanowires, while the latter is attributed to a reduction in the optical density of states associated with the nanostructure morphology. Details of this behavior are discussed together with the implications for potential device applications. (c) 2008 American Institute of Physics.