The Role of Codopants in Er Doped Si Material and Devices
Abstract
The goal of this investigation was to determine the role of co-dopants in the effort to obtain useful EL from Er doped Si devices. One unforeseen difficulty was the essential role that co-dopants played in the simple epitaxial growth of Er doped Si material. Without co-dopants, the Er introduced during growth, segregates to the growth surface and prevents single crystal formation. It was decided to produce films with varying 0 and/or 0/C co-doping concentrations. This material was found to produce a strong PL response as hoped. The next step was to produce a device that incorporated this material into the vicinity of the metallurgical junction that defined the PN junction. First it was necessary to prove that our overall process could be used to fabricate working PN junctions with large reverse bias voltages. This was not automatic, and it was necessary to develop a process that would reproducibly give diodes with high reverse bias voltages. This work was more involved than originally anticipated and actually resulted in a patent application of the process. Several Er doped Si diodes were fabricated from material that produced strong PL signals, however no EL was observed. It was concluded that due to device geometry, the EL signal was too low for our low efficiency detector to see.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Apr 01, 2001
- Accession Number
- ADA398333
Entities
People
- Walter Varhue
Organizations
- University of Vermont