Si-based light emitters How bright is the future?

Electrically driven Si-based light emitters will give a major impact on the development of integrated photonic applications. However, despite the remarkable success which was achieved in the last two decades on this field none of the different Si-based light emitters of today can compete with III-V light emitters or organic LEDs in terms of efficiency and life time. In many cases the applied voltage is also uncomfortably high.

The presentation discusses several aspects of the suitability of Si-based light emitters for applications on the example of rare earth implanted MOS structures. In the first part it will be shown that in case the electrical excitation mechanism is based on impact excitation of hot electrons there is a dark zone behind the injection interface in which luminescence centers will not be excited. With a dark zone extension in the order of 20 nm this limits the possibility to downscale the oxide layer thickness and thus the applied voltage. The second part of the presentation reports about ongoing activities to utilize Si-based light emitters for biosensors. Finally, the topic of Si-based light emitters embedded in photonic architectures is briefly addressed.