Photoluminescence induced by thermal annealing in SrTiO3 thin film

Abstract

We have grown SrTiO3 thin films by rf-sputtering and studied its photoluminescence (PL) property after postannealing treatments. While the as-grown film does not show any PL signal, visible frequency PL emissions are induced by high temperature (T>550 °C) annealing. When subsequent low-T (50 °C) and long term (>8 months) annealing was made, the PL-spectra evolved into another pattern in which four distinct luminescence peaks appear simultaneously at λ=1.8, 2.2, 2.7, and 3.1 eV. We propose that these remarkable room temperature PL effects are due to both metastable and energetically stabilized defect states formed inside the band gap. © 2009 American Institute of Physics.