Decay dynamics of blue–green luminescence in meso-porous MCM-41 nanotubes

Time-resolved photoluminescence (PL) was performed to investigate the decay of blue–green luminescence in MCM-41 nanotubes. The PL decay exhibits a clear nonexponential profile, which can be fitted by a stretched exponential function. In the temperature range from 50 to 300 K the photogenerated carriers become thermally activated with a characteristic energy of 29 meV, which is an indication of the phonon-assisted nonradiative process. The temperature dependence of the lifetime of PL decay has been explained using a model based on the radiative recombination of localized carriers and the phonon-assisted nonradiative recombination.