The motivation for developing silicon-based light emitters is the requirement of tiny light sources in the visible regions

which can be directly integrated into silicon chips for the analysis of different biological substances

for silicon optical couplers

and high-resolution low-cost micro displays.It is believed that the development of integrate circuit will open a door for the continuous increasing of silicon-based light emitters predicted by Moore's law.Many efforts

such as bulk silicon

Si nanocrystals

and rare earth(RE)coupled Si nanocrystals have been extensively studied.Weighing the studies mentioned above

rare RE-doped silicon light emitter

which has intense light emission even at room temperature

is a better candidate.In this report

the photoluminescence of Tb implanted SiN

x

films grown by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition(PECVD)was investigated.And the effects of surface plasmon on the photoluminescence emission decay time of Tb

3+

doped SiN

x

films with different sized of Ag islands films were investigated.The photoluminescence(PL)and time resolved photoluminescence(TRPL)at room temperature show that the PL of SiN

x

:Tb

3+

film has the highest intensity at 547 nm with corresponding emission decay time 708 ms.After sputtering silver films

the TRPL of Tb

3+

ions shows the decrease of the emission decay time.An increase of emission decay time was observed due to the increased size of Ag islands after rapid thermal processing(RTP).We find good agreement between our experimental results and those predicted by a classical theory

which assumes the emitter to be a damped oscillating electric dipole.Therefore

it allows one to be confident that the silver islands do altered the emission decay time which correspondingly improve the internal quantum efficiency of the SiN

x

:Tb

3+

.