A high-quality silver mirror coating technology capable of offering various colors for the decoration of molding items is desirable. We have developed both chemical reagents and procedures for improving the silver mirror coating layers. Treatment A with a sodium thiosulfate aqueous solution is a cleaning process for the silver layers. Treatment B with a water-based solution of silane coupling agent is a process for improving the adhesion property of mirror coating layers. Both treatments improve the durability of the silver mirror coating.

Silicon nanocrystals were in situ grown in a silicon nitride film by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition. The size and structure of silicon nanocrystals were confirmed by high-resolution transmission electron microscopy. Depending on the size, the photoluminescence of silicon nanocrystals can be tuned from the near infrared (1.38 eV) to the ultraviolet (3.02 eV). The fitted photoluminescence peak energy as E(eV) = 1.16 + 11.8/d2 is an evidence for the quantum confinement effect in silicon nanocrystals. The results demonstrate that the band gap of silicon nanocrystals embedded in silicon nitride matrix was more effectively controlled for a wide range of luminescent wavelengths.

The role of the size of amorphous silicon quantum dots in the Er luminescence at 1.54 μm was investigated. As the dot size was increased, the more Er ions were located near one dot due to its large surface area and more Er ions interacted with other ones. This Er-Er interaction caused a weak photoluminescence intensity despite the increase in the effective excitation cross section. The critical dot size, needed to take advantage of the positive effect on Er luminescence, is considered to be about 2.0 nm, below which a small dot is very effective in the efficient luminescence of Er.