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Physical Review Letters

Dynamics of Si-H Vibrations in an Amorphous Environment

Marjolein van der Voort, Chris W. Rella, Lex F. G. van der Meer, Andrey V. Akimov, J. I. Dijkhuis

Published Feb 7, 2000• 36 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We present results of the first vibrational photon-echo, transient-grating, and temperature dependent transient-bleaching experiments on a-Si:H. Using these techniques, and the infrared light of a free electron laser, the vibrational population decay and phase relaxation of the Si-H stretching mode were investigated. Careful analysis of the data indicates that the vibrational energy relaxes directly into Si-H bending modes and Si phonons, with a distribution of rates determined by the amorphous host. Conversely, the pure dephasing appears to be single exponential, and can be modeled by dephasing via two-phonon interactions.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.84.1236

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The first infrared vibrational photon echo experiments conducted in a liquid and a glass are reported. The experiments were performed on the CO stretching mode of tungsten hexacarbonyl at 5.1 micrometers (1960 cm-1) in 2-methyltetrahydrofuran over the temperature range 300 K to 16 K using picosecond pulses from the free electron laser at Stanford University. In addition, the first vibrational population relaxation measurements spanning a temperature range that takes a system from a liquid to a supercooled liquid to a glass are reported.
The first infrared vibrational photon echo experiments conducted in a liquid and a glass are reported. The experiments were performed on the CO stretching mode of tungsten hexacarbonyl at 5.1 \ensuremath{\mu}m (1960 ${\mathrm{cm}}^{\mathrm{\ensuremath{-}}1}$) in 2-methyltetrahydrofuran over the temperature range 300 to 16 K using picosecond pulses from the free electron laser at Stanford University. In addition, the first vibrational population relaxation measurements spanning a temperature range that takes a system from a liquid to a supercooled liquid to a glass are reported.
The influence of the environment on vibrational dynamics, and especially on the vibrational dephasing time, is investigated for a simple system : DCl in a van der Waals solid (N2 lattice). Photon echo experiments are performed using the infrared free electron laser CLIO. In solid nitrogen, decay times of the third order polarization are in the picosecond range. In the case of the isolated DCl monomers in van der Waals interaction with the host, the observed signals are interpreted in term of a rapid spectral diffusion. The two different stretching modes of DCl dimers, perturbed in a different way by the weak hydrogen bond, exhibit different coherence times, reflecting the influence of the interaction strength between the molecules.
Vibrational photon echo experiments were performed on the asymmetric CO stretching mode of tungsten hexacarbonyl in glassy dibutylphthalate as a function of temperature using sub-picosecond infrared pulses (1976 cm−1) from a free electron laser. The echo decays display pronounced beats and are bi-exponential. The beats and bi-exponential decays arise because the bandwith of the pulses exceed the vibrational anharmonicity, leading to the excitation and dephasing of a multilevel coherence. From the beat frequency, the anharmonicity is determined to be 14.7 cm−1. From the bi-exponential decay components, the temperature-dependent vibrational dephasing of both the v = 0 → 1 and v = 1 → 2 transitions are determined.