Design and Fabrication of a Monolithic Optoelectronic Integrated Si CMOS LED Based on Hot-Carrier Effect

Abstract

New research results with regard to two- and three-terminal Si-LEDs realized in a silicon MOS-like device fabricated using the CMOS process technology are presented. Since in the reverse-biased p-n junction the light intensity increases with electric field near the depletion region, the detailed characteristics of the field emission devices are investigated showing that in diode, the field varies with the p-n junction's reverse bias, and in gate-controlled diode the field varies with the voltage of gate-terminal. Due to the impossibility of experimentally measuring the field, two-dimensional device simulator is implemented to model the field distribution in the device. Simulated results show that, for the MOS-like device, the field in the three-terminal gate-controlled diode is of one order of magnitude higher than that in the two-terminal diode. In conclusion, the three-terminal device has a much better optical emission than the two-terminal device, and the emission enhancement is attributed to the tunneling-assisted photon emission that can only be achieved in the three-terminal gate-controlled diode. Good agreement is achieved between simulation and experiment.