Study and development of a silicon infrared diode operating under forward bias

Abstract This work presents an advance in optoelectronic silicon-based devices, since a theoretical and experimental study by the authors of an inexpensive transformation process by which a commercially available silicon p–n junction has been made to emit infrared light. The authors introduce a ‘nano-layer’ degradation to aid in the recombination processes necessary to obtain a silicon light emitting process. Silicon diodes are known as a very weak light emitter or even no-light emitting devices. Several techniques have been used to force silicon to emit light, the results was light emission in all colors, varying from visible to infrared. But the efficiency of the device remains very low compared to the costs of fabrication. In our paper, the intensity of the emitted light is an increasing function of the injected current, instead of the attenuation reported by others.

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