Intrinsic luminescence in oriented BeO crystals under VUV and inner-shell excitation

Beryllium oxide (BeO) crystals were investigated by time-resolved low temperature VUV-spectroscopy at the SUPERLUMI station and BW3 beam line of HASYLAB (DESY, Hamburg). Photoluminescence spectra (3-10.5 eV), luminescence decay kinetics upon selective photoexcitation, as well as luminescence excitation (50-650 eV) and reflectivity, (9-35 eV) spectra were measured and analyzed for oriented BeO crystals. It was shown that study of oriented crystals makes the traditional time-resolved spectroscopy method essentially more informative. Formation of the self-trapped exciton excited states of different multiplicity was found to sensitively depend on excitation energy and mutual orientation of the crystal's C optical axis and electric vector E of exciting polarized synchrotron radiation. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.