%0 Journal Article %J J. Appl. Phys.Journal of Applied Physics %D 1997 %T Spectral diffusion within the porous silicon emission wavelength range on the nanosecond to millisecond time scale %A Song, Li %E El-Sayed, Mostafa A %E Chen, P. %K elemental semiconductors %K photoluminescence %K porous materials %K radiative lifetimes %K red shift %K silicon %K spectral line breadth %K spectral line shift %K time resolved spectra %X The emission spectrum from porous silicon (PS) at room temperature was recorded after different delay times ranging from 30 ns to 2.0 ms after pulsed laser excitation by using a gated charge-coupled device camera. In agreement with previous studies, the photoluminescence of porous silicon was found to redshift with delay time in the ns to 100 μs time scale. However, a study of the normalized band shape of the redshifted emission reveals that the emission spectrum retains its band shape rather than giving a distorted band shape that increases in intensity on the longer wavelength side. This behavior suggests that the redshift in the emission spectrum of porous silicon is a result of spectral diffusion resulting from energy transfer among emitters within the inhomogeneously broadened absorption spectrum. Furthermore, on the longer time scale (0.8–2 ms), the much weaker, long wavelength emission spectrum is found to blueshift as the delay time is increased. Two peaks were resolved in the photoluminescence spectrum. One is centered around 650 nm and the other is centered around 750 nm. The photoluminescence at 600 and 800 nm have lifetimes of 0.35 and 0.19 ms, respectively. This observation suggests the existence of two distinct molecular species responsible for the observed photoluminescence in PS. %B J. Appl. Phys.Journal of Applied Physics %I AIP %V 82 %P 836 %8 1997 %G eng %U http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.365781 %N 2