Delayed luminescence and thermoluminescence in laboratory-grown diamonds

Abstract

The blue-green phosphorescence/thermoluminescence is most commonly observed in diamonds following excitation at or above the indirect band gap and has been explained by a substitutional nitrogen-boron donor-acceptor pair recombination model. Orange and red phosphorescence have also been frequently observed in lab-grown near-colourless high-pressure high-temperature diamonds following optical excitation, and their luminescence mechanisms are shown to be different from that of the blue-green phosphorescence. The physics of the orange and red luminescence and phosphorescence bands including the optical-excitation dependency (UV-NIR), temperature dependency (20 - 573 K), and related charge transfer process are investigated by a combination of self-built time-resolved imaging/spectroscopic techniques. In this paper, an alternative model for long-lived phosphorescence based on charge trapping is proposed to explain the orange phosphorescence/ thermoluminescence band. Additionally, the red phosphorescence band are attributed to point defect which possibly has a three-level phosphorescence system.