Active planar optical waveguide made from luminescent silicon nanocrystals

We show experimentally that a layer of silicon nanocrystals, prepared by the Si-ion implantation (with the energy of 400 keV) into a synthetic silica slab and exhibiting room-temperature red photoluminescence, can serve simultaneously as a single-mode planar optical waveguide. The waveguide is shown to self-select guided transverse electric and transverse magnetic modes from the broad photoluminescence emission of the nanocrystals resulting in a substantially narrower emission spectrum for these modes. We further report on an investigation of optical gain in a sample implanted to a dose of 4x10(17) cm(-2). Despite the occurrence of strong waveguiding, results of the variable stripe length method turned out not to be able to give unambiguous evidence for optical gain. (C) 2003 American Institute of Physics.