Kinetic features of optically stimulated luminescence in aluminum nitride powder

Room-temperature optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) response in UV-irradiated aluminum nitride (AlN) powders has been studied. Excitation of AlN powder by UV photons with energies within 3–5 eV gives rise to an intense afterglow that is related to isothermal quenching of recombination processes involving shallow donor centers. It is established that a useful OSL response separated on the background of this recombination afterglow represents a superposition of two components with decay kinetics order b = 1.0–1.2 and 1.7–2.1. Superlinear UV-dose dependences of the OSL light sum have been measured and the corresponding coefficients for each component have been analyzed in comparison to the available published data.