White light emission from silicon oxycarbide films prepared by using atmospheric pressure microplasma jet

An atmospheric pressure microplasma jet was employed as a deposition tool to fabricate silicon oxycarbide films from tetraethoxysilane-argon (Ar) mixture gas at room temperature. Resultant films exhibit intense visible emission under a 325 nm excitation which appears white to naked eyes in the range from similar to 1.75 to similar to 3.5 eV at room temperature. The origin of photoluminescence is attributed to the electron-hole pair recombination through neutral oxygen vacancies (NOVs) in the film. The density of NOV defects was found in the range from 3.48x10(15) to 2.23x10(16) cm(-3). The photoluminescence quantum efficiencies were estimated to be 1.48%-4.15%. Present experiment results demonstrate that the silicon oxycarbide films prepared by using atmospheric pressure microplasma jet would be a competitive candidate for the development of white light emission devices.