Porous Silicon: From Formation to Applications: Optoelectronics, Microelectronics, and Energy Technology Applications, Volume Three

Chapter 1

Electroluminescence Devices (LED)

Bernard Jacques Gelloz

1.1 Introduction

Silicon (Si) technology overwhelmingly dominates microelectronics. However, Si is a very poor light emitting material because of its indirect bandgap. Furthermore, its bandgap of ~1.1 eV at room temperature would limit its use to the near infrared range. As a result, other light emitting materials, such as compound semiconductors, or organic molecules have been chosen for optoelectronic applications such as optical communication, display, and lighting.

On-chip Si-based light emitters are very much desired to overcome the so-called electrical interconnect bottleneck in microelectronics. The display community, as well as other arenas involving lighting, would also ...