Towards the First Silicon Laser [Paperback]

Silicon, the leading material in microelectronics during the last four decades, also promises to be the key material in the future. Despite many claims that silicon technology has reached fundamental limits, the performance of silicon microelectronics continues to improve steadily. The same holds for almost all the applications for which Si was considered to be unsuitable. The main exception to this positive trend is the silicon laser, which has not been demonstrated to date. The main reason for this comes from a fundamental limitation related to the indirect nature of the Si band-gap. In the recent past, many different approaches have been taken to achieve this goal: dislocated silicon, extremely pure silicon, silicon nanocrystals, porous silicon, Er doped Si-Ge, SiGe alloys and multiquantum wells, SiGe quantum dots, SiGe quantum cascade structures, shallow impurity centers in silicon and Er doped silicon. All of these are abundantly illustrated in the present book.High efficiency silicon light emitting diodes.- Dislocation-based silicon light emitting devices.- Efficient electroluminescence in alloyed silicon diodes.- Light emitting devices based on silicon nanocrystals.- Optical and electrical characteristics of LEDs fabricated from Si-nanocrystals. embedded in SiO2.- Electroluminescence in Si/SiO2 Layers.- Reverse biased porous silicon light emitting diodes.- Strong blue light emission from ion implanted Si/SiO2 structures.- Si/Ge nanostructures for LED.- Optical spectroscopy of single silicon quantum dots.- Luminescence from Si/SiO2 nanostructures.- Electronic and dielectric properties of porous silicon.- Silicon technology used for size-controlled silicon nanocrystals.- Structural and optical properties of silicon nanocrystals embedded in Silicon Oxide films.- Stimulated emission in silicon nanocrystals Gain measurement and rate equation modelling.- Lasing effects in ultrasmall silicon nanoparticles.- On fast optical gain in silicon nanostructures.- ExperimentlƒC