Light emission from rare-earths in dislocation engineered silicon substrates

Abstract

We report and compare the luminescence, both photo- and electroluminescence, in the near-infrared of a wide range of rare earths (Pr, Nd, Sm, Gd, Tb, Dy, Ho, Er, and Tm) doped dislocation engineered silicon light emitting devices. The rare earths are introduced using ion implantation into standard Czochralski (CZ) n-type silicon wafers pre-implanted with boron to form both the p–n junction and an engineered dislocation loop array. Rare earth internal transitions are observed in samples co-doped with Dy, Ho, Er, and Tm. We show that for each rare earth optimizing the optical activity depends critically on the rare earth implant parameters and post-implant process conditions. Room temperature operation in the 1.5 and 2.0 µm spectral regions is observed from the internal rare earth transitions in Er and Tm.