Carrier lifetime measurement on electroluminescent metal–oxide–silicon tunneling diodes

Abstract

The temporal response of the electroluminescence at the Si band gap energy from a metal–oxide–silicon (MOS) tunneling diode is used to characterize the minority carrier lifetime near the Si/SiO2 interface. The temporal responses reveal that the Shockley–Read–Hall (SRH) recombination lifetimes are 18 and 25.8 μs for the rising and falling edges, respectively, and that the ratio for SRH, radiative, and Auger recombinations is 1:0.196:0.096 at injection current density of 39 A/cm2. The investigation shows that the electroluminescence of the MOS tunneling diode can be significantly increased by reducing the number of the nonradiative recombination centers.