Electrically driven light emission from an array of Si nanoclusters

K. MAZZITELLO; H.O. MÁRTIN; C.M. ALDAO; H.E. ROMAN

JOURNAL OF PHYSICS - D (APPLIED PHYSICS)

Año: 2004 vol. 374 p. 668 - 673

0022-3727

Charge transport and light emission properties of an array of silicon nanoclusters (NCs), sandwiched between a p-type and an n-type doped silicon crystal, are studied theoretically by assuming that electrons and holes enter from the opposite sides of the array in response to an applied electric field. The size of the NCs considered ranges from 16 nm down to 3.6 nm and their spstial distribution is optimized so that light emission, resulting from radiative recombinations, is peaked in the visible red around 1.8 eV. The light emission efficiency is limited by the carrier hopping times and is found to be in the range 2-0.5%, for fields ranging from 100 kVcm-1 to 500 kV cm-1, respectively.