Stress dependence of paramagnetic point defects in amorphous silicon oxide

Room-temperature red cathodoluminescence (CL) emission (R band) arising from the paramagnetic point-defect population present in amorphous silicon oxide (SiOx) has been characterized with respect to its shift upon applied stress, according to a piezo-spectroscopic (PS) approach. The R band (found at around 630 nm) originates from nonbridging oxygen hole centers (NBOHC; Si-O*) generated in the presence of oxygen-excess sites. It is shown that reliable stress assessments can be obtained in silica glass with a relatively high spatial resolution, provided that appropriate spectroscopic procedures are developed to precisely extract from the CL spectrum the shift upon stress of the R band, isolated from other partly overlapping bands. Macroscopic and microscopic PS calibration procedures are shown to lead to consistent results on silica materials with different chemical characteristics and, thus, with different intrinsic defect populations. In addition, quantitative calibrations of both electron probe size and luminescence emission distribution within the electron probe are given. As an application of the PS technique, the magnitude of the residual stress piled up (mainly due to a thermal expansion mismatch) at a sharp silica/silicon interface has been characterized by taking into account the gradient in defect population developed as a function of distance from the interface. In the Results and Discussion section, brief comments are offered regarding the possible impact of highly spatially resolved stress assessments in silica glass upon the development of new materials and advanced electronic devices.