Electroluminescing Porous Silicon (ELPS) Device

摘要

The main goal of this project was to determine the mechanism of operation of anall silicon, electroluminescing device. The device consists of an n+ silicon wire supported on top of a layer of porous silicon. Other aims included the evaluation of the device's light emitting efficiency and it's potential as a silicon-based light source. The device emits light over a broad spectrum, extending from the visible into the infrared, with two dominant peaks, at 1.3 and 2.05 microns. An optical quantum efficiency of better than 6% was determined. The device demonstrated continuous device operation for over 150 hours. The spectral data strongly suggests that blackbody radiation is the dominant emission mechanism in our device. However, there is also evidence of hot electron induced emission. We suspect that hot electrons are injected into the interface with the underlying porous silicon, from which some of the emission originates.