Abstract
Group-IV materials for monolithic integration with silicon optoelectronic systems are being extensively studied. As a part of efforts, light emission from germanium has been pursued with the objective of evolving germanium into an efficient light source for optical communication systems. In this study, we demonstrate room-temperature electroluminescence from germanium in an Al(0.3)Ga(0.7)As/Ge heterojunction light-emitting diode without any complicated manipulation for alternating material properties of germanium. Electroluminescence peaks were observed near 1550 nm and the energy around this wavelength corresponds to that emitted from direct recombination at the Γ-valley of germanium.
Highlights
Optical devices based on group-IV materials have been widely studied for possible applications in the integrated silicon (Si) photonics systems [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
As a part of efforts, light emission from germanium has been pursued with the objective of evolving germanium into an efficient light source for optical communication systems
We demonstrate room-temperature electroluminescence from germanium in an Al0.3Ga0.7As/Ge heterojunction light-emitting diode without any complicated manipulation for alternating material properties of germanium
Summary
Optical devices based on group-IV materials have been widely studied for possible applications in the integrated silicon (Si) photonics systems [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. Transport along valleys aligned in the k-space can be an efficient method of electron injection across a heterojunction [17,18]. AlxGa1-xAs, a ternary alloy, has a directbandgap for Al compositions up to approximately 40%, while it turns into an indirectbandgap semiconductor for higher Al mole fractions [19,20]. It is a potential source of electrons for light emission in Ge. In this work, a heterojunction near-infrared (IR) light-emitting diode (LED) operating at room temperature was fabricated and investigated. We applied the Γ-Γ transport mechanism in Al0.3Ga0.7As/Ge heterojunctions to inject carriers into the Γ-valley of Ge, by which a strong electroluminescence (EL) from Ge region was obtained at 300 K without introducing any complicated processing for intent to manipulate the material characteristics of Ge
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