Abstract
Enhanced electroluminescence (EL) from SiNx light emitting devices (LEDs) with an ITO/SiO2/SiNx/Ag/p/p+-Si/Al structure was observed. Comparing to SiNx LEDs without Ag islands layer, those with Ag islands layer could conduct a higher injection current and extract light more efficiently due to the roughness of Ag islands film. Moreover, the localized surface plasmons induced by Ag islands enhanced the radiative efficiency of LEDs, resulting in the EL enhancement of ~14. By the combination enhancement on light extraction efficiency, radiative efficiency, and current-injection efficiency, the external quantum efficiency of EL from SiNx LEDs was improved by at least one order of magnitude.
Highlights
An intense research effort towards efficient light emission from silicon-based materials has been ongoing, the persistent absence of an efficient silicon-based light source has still prevented the realization of silicon photonic chips
The localized surface plasmons induced by Ag islands enhanced the radiative efficiency of light emitting devices (LEDs), resulting in the EL enhancement of ~14
Further improvement of the EL performance of SiNx-based light emitting devices (LEDs) can be achieved by the optimization of the surface coverage and/or the morphology of Ag particles
Summary
An intense research effort towards efficient light emission from silicon-based materials has been ongoing, the persistent absence of an efficient silicon-based light source has still prevented the realization of silicon photonic chips. To achieve highly efficient LEDs, several methods, such as introducing surface plasmons (SPs) [10,11], surface roughing [12], nano-patterned substrate [13], and NH3 plasma treatment [14] have been applied to circumvent the problems Among those methods, increasing the radiative recombination rate by coupling excitons to SPs in metal nanostructures has attracted a great deal of attention [10,11,15,16]. Enormous efforts on SPs enhanced emission efficiency from InGaN-based luminescent materials, which were the widely-used state-of-the-art high efficiency blue-green-yellow emitters, have been made in the last decades [16,17,18,19,20,21]. Received 10 May 2012; revised 22 May 2012; accepted 22 May 2012; published 24 May 2012 1 June 2012 / Vol 2, No 6 / OPTICAL MATERIALS EXPRESS 873
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