Luminescence of black silicon fabricated by high-repetition rate femtosecond laser pulses

We studied the photoluminescence (PL) from black silicon that was fabricated using an 800 nm, 250 kHz femtosecond laser in air. By changing the scan velocity and the fluence of the femtosecond laser, the formation of the PL band between the orange (600 nm) and red bands (near 680 nm) could be controlled. The red band PL from the photoinduced microstructures on the black silicon was observed even without annealing due to the thermal accumulation of high-repetition rate femtosecond laser pulses. The orange band PL was easily quenched under 532 nm cw laser irradiation, whereas the red band PL was more stable; this can be attributed to “defect luminescence” and “quantum confinement”, respectively.