Near-band edge light emission from silicon semiconductor on insulator diodes

Light-emitting diodes have been designed and fabricated on commercial crystalline silicon semiconductor on insulator wafers. Strong infrared light emission has been observed from these diodes under forward bias conditions with an external quantum efficiency of 2×10−6. The band edge phonon-assisted photoluminescence from the top single-crystalline silicon layer is responsible for such emission with a spectrum peaked at 1.135μm wavelength. Due to negligible reabsorption of spontaneously emitted photons within the extremely thin silicon layer, the short wavelength emission is significantly stronger in relative terms compared to emission from bulk-silicon light-emitting devices.

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