High-speed electroluminescence from semiconducting carbon nanotube films

Abstract

High-speed light emitters integrated on silicon chips can enable novel architectures for silicon-based optoelectronics, such as on-chip optical interconnects and silicon photonics. However, conventional light sources based on compound semiconductors face major challenges for their integration with the silicon-based platforms because of the difficulty of their direct growth on a silicon substrate. Here, we report high-speed, ultra-small-size on-chip electroluminescence (EL) emitters based on semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) thin films. The peaks of the EL emission spectra are about 0.15-eV redshifted from the peaks of the absorption and photoluminescence emission spectra, which probably suggest emission from trions. High-speed responses of ∼100 ps were experimentally observed from the EL emitters, which indicate the possibility of several-GHz modulation. The pulsed light generation was also obtained by applying the pulse voltage. These high-speed and ultra-small-size EL emitters can enable novel on-chip optoelectronic devices for highly integrated optoelectronics and silicon photonics.