In this contribution we present the structural and photoluminescence (PL) analysis of Er doped nanocrystalline silicon thin films produced by rf magnetron sputtering method. We show the strong influence of the presence of nanocrystalline fraction in films on their luminescence efficiency at 1.54 mum that has been studied on the series of specially prepared samples with the different crystallinity, i. e. percentage and sizes of Si nanocrystals. In has been observed the strong, by about two orders of magnitude, increase of Er-related PL intensity in these samples with the lowering of Si nanocrystal sizes from 7.9 to about 1.5 nm. The results are discussed in terms of the sensitization effect of Si nanocrystals on Er ions. This work was partially supported by FCT foundation (Portugal) and Russian foundation for basic research (RFBR project N 01-02-16439).
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