Thermally activated emission from direct bandgap-like silicon quantum dots

Due to the covalent character of silicon-carbon (Si-C) bond, C-linked molecules on the silicon quantum dot (SiQD) surface lead to dramatic changes in wavefunctions of the excited electron-hole pairs. Some of the optical transitions are strongly modified and attain direct bandgap-like character, giving rise to bright phonon-less fast decaying emission, while many other transitions keep their typical indirect bandgap character. It appears that in C-terminated SiQDs, with diameter larger than ∼2 nm, the most efficient recombination occurs from states slightly above the ground state. This leads to thermal activation of the fast emission, dominating the photoluminescence from these SiQDs. On the other hand, in the smallest SiQDs of less than 2 nm, the lowest excited states have the direct bandgap-like character and therefore their emission becomes gradually dominant at lower temperatures, as indeed supported by our experimental observations.