Photoluminescence of tin dioxide (SnO2) nanostructure grown on Si(001) by thermal evaporation technique

This work reports the growth and photoluminescence of tin dioxide (SnO2) nanostructure on Si (001) substrate. The growth was done by thermal evaporation of tin and subsequent air exposure at room temperature. The in situ low energy electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy studies indicated that the growth followed the Volmer-Werber growth mode leading to the formation of SnO2 island nanostructure with the smallest island size of 86 ± 10 nm and the highest percentage of surface coverage of 53% at the substrate temperature of 225 °C. The grazing incident X-ray diffraction and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy results confirmed the formation of amorphous SnO2 nanostructure. The photoluminescence spectra under the excitation of 350 nm radiation at room temperature showed two emission peaks in the yellow region at 574.0 nm and 555.9 nm, and three emission peaks in the blue region at 450 nm, 467 nm, and 478 nm. The CIE (x,y) chromaticity calculated from the emission spectra showed that the coordinators were located at approximately x = 0.2419 and y = 0.3089 in a region of white emission.