Study Of Transport And Electroluminescence Mechanism In The Structure Of Au/(Si/SiO₂)/p-Si

Following the development of information technology, the need for optoelectronic device which can be integrated into the current Si technology has initiated an intense research for silicon-based light emitters, the rate of communication and computer can be improved if use the photon as an information carrier. Si/SiO₂ is a very promising material. Due to its full compatibility with current Si technology, the very good control over the fabrication process and the excellent electrical, mechanical and chemical properties.In this paper, A structure of Au/(Si/SiO₂)/p-Si was fabricated using a radio-frequency(R.F) magnetron sputtering system. Then the I-V characteristics and EL spectrum were measured at a home temperature.In order to understand the behavior of carriers for voltage, tunneling and thermal electron emission models are employed to explain the current information, the result indicated that carriers went into silicon oxide films by the Fowler-Nordheim tunneling model at a high bias voltage. But at low bias vbltage or reverse voltage, the current are induced by thermal electron emission.In the same time Configuration Coordinate was used as a theoretical model to interpret EL mechanism, the numerical results indicated that the light emitting happened not in the granular silicon but in the SiO₂ films, the holes and electron recombined by some defects exist in SiO₂ layer which can form radiation recombination centers.