Eur. Phys. J. D 63, 289-292 (2011)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2011-10513-x

Regular Article

Photoluminescence dynamics of organic molecule-passivated Si nanoclusters

¹ Synchrotron Light Application Center/Saga University, 1 Honjo, 840-8502 Saga, Japan
² Department of Mechanical Engineering/Kobe University, Nada-ku, Kobe, Japan
³ Research Center for Ultra-High Voltage Electron Microscopy/Osaka University, Ibaraki, Osaka, Japan
⁴ Department of Applied Chemistry/Tokyo University of Science, Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan

^a e-mail: mimamura@cc.saga-u.ac.jp

Received: 16 September 2010
Received in final form: 22 January 2011
Published online: 17 June 2011

Abstract

The size-selected phenyl-passivated Si nanoclusters with the mean diameters of 1.5 and 1.3 nm have been prepared in the solution route. The intense PL observed in Si nanoclusters, in which the band gap energies increase up to approximately 4 eV, originates from electron-hole pair recombination. From time-resolved PL, two kinds of exponential PL decay components with fast and slow lifetime were observed. The identical decays with slow lifetime will be derived from the surface states of Si nanoclusters passivated by phenyl molecules. The size-dependent zero-phonon assisted optical transitions by quantum size effects occur at a high rate of sub-nanosecond timescale.