Light-emission from rare-earth implanted amorphous silicon dioxide layers

Over the last more than 15 years we have been employing ion beam processing to dope gate-type amorphous silicon dioxide layers grown by thermal oxidation with a variety of species, mostly rare earth elements, to use these layers for the purpose of electroluminescence from a MOS capacitor device based on silicon technology. The main motivation for this work was the integration of optoelectronic functionality into silicon-based electronic circuits as one of the key challenges for future semiconductor applications. Here we report on different rare earth (RE) luminescent centres embedded into the silicon dioxide layer of purpose-designed Metal-Oxide-Silicon-based Light Emitting Devices (MOSLEDs) with advanced electrical performance. Efficient electroluminescence was obtained from UV to infrared with a transparent top electrode made of indium-tin oxide. The electrical and electroluminescence properties of these devices are discussed in respect of possible applications for biosensing. Most of our work was recently published in one of the Springer textbook series [1]. Special devotion will be given in the talk to Akos G.Revesz who died in 2008 [2]. He was one of the pioneers of the physico-chemistry of amorphous silicon dioxide devoted to MOS technology.
[1] L.Rebohle & W.Skorupa “Rare-Earth Implanted MOS Devices for Silicon Photonics”, Springer Series in Materials Science vol.142, 2010
[2] http://www.electrochem.org/dl/interface/sum/sum08/su08_p20-22.pdf