Effect of Si₃N₄‐Mediated Inversion Layer on the Electroluminescence Properties of Silicon Nanocrystal Superlattices

Abstract

The achievement of an efficient all‐Si electrically‐pumped light emitter is a major milestone in present optoelectronics still to be fulfilled. Silicon nanocrystals (Si NCs) are an attractive material which, by means of the quantum confinement effect, allow attaining engineered bandgap visible emission from Si by controlling the NC size. In this work, SiO2‐embedded Si NCs are employed as an active layer within a light‐emitting device structure. It is demonstrated that the use of an additional thin Si3N4 interlayer within the metal–insulator–semiconductor device design induces an enhanced minority carrier injection from the substrate, which in turn increases the efficiency of sequential carrier injection under pulsed electrical excitation. This results in a substantial increase in the electroluminescence efficiency of the device. Here, the effect of this Si3N4 interlayer on the structural, optical, electrical, and electro‐optical properties of a Si NC‐based light emitter is reported, and the physics underlying these results is discussed.

The Carrier Transport Properties of B-Doped Si Nanocrystal Films with Various Doping Concentrations

“…Si nanocrystals (Si NCs) have attracted more and more interest in recent years because of their possible applications in many kinds of nanoelectronic and optoelectronic devices such as light emitter devices, thin-film solar cells, photodetectors, and synaptic devices [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. For example, highly efficient electroluminescence devices based on Si NCs have been fabricated by Yao et al [9].…”