Smbe Grown Uniformly And Selectively Doped Si:Er Structures For Leds And Lasers

Abstract

In recent years an increasing attention has been focused on the investigation of optically active Er centers in Si in view of great application possibilities opened for this material. The intra-center emission of Er3+ ions occurs at a wavelength of 1.54 urn where silica based optical fibers are known to have minimum loss and low dispersion. It makes Si:Er attractive as a light emitting source for fiber optics communication systems. Moreover, the realization of efficient light emitters on Si will offer new opportunities in the application of Si-based optoelectronic devices for large-scale integrated circuits. The methods commonly used for incorporating Er into silicon are ion implantation [1] and molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) [4]. In this contribution we present an original method of sublimation MBE (SMBE) [7] and describe its capabilities for growth of effective light-emitting Si:Er-based structures including light-emitting diodes operating at room temperature. Along with the SMBE grown uniform Si:Er layers, the photoluminescence (PL) efficiency of which is comparable with or even higher than that of the ion- implanted layers, we consider here a novel type of Er-doped structures — the selectively doped Si/Si:Er/Si/Si:Er…/Si multilayer structures with enhanced photo- and electroluminescence (EL) efficiency [9]. Finally, we provide the results of simulations for the parameters of real laser-type structures and discuss the prospects of achieving stimulated emission on their basis.