Plasmon-Enhanced Emission From CMOS Compatible Si-LEDs With Gold Nanoparticles

Abstract

Complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) compatible silicon (Si)-based light sources are attracting more and more attention for the potential to realizing on-chip optical interconnection ultimately. Annealed noble metal nanoparticles (NPs) are often used to enhance the emission efficiency of low-efficiency light emitters due to the surface plasmon (SP) effects. Compared with silver NPs (Ag NPs) and gold NPs (Au NPs) show excellent stability in the air environment. However, Au NPs are not always chosen to enhance the emission efficiency of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) due to the high annealing temperature and CMOS incompatible. Here, we report the first study of enhancing emission from CMOS compatible Si-based LEDs by transferring annealed Au NPs onto the device surfaces. A 4.3-fold total enhancement integrated across the electroluminescence spectrum and an eightfold enhancement at 900 nm are ultimately achieved. The enhancement is attributed to electrical performances improvement of the Si-based LEDs and enhanced scattering by Au NPs due to the coupling between the SP modes of Au NPs and the waveguide modes of Si slab waveguide.

An Efficient Forward-Biased Si CMOS LED With High Optical Power Density and Nonlinear Optical-Power-Current Characteristic

“…And also, when the Si-LED works at high current, the Si-LED exhibits nonlinearity in growth of output optical power with injection current increasing. All these imply that this is a new-type Si-LED, which may act as highly efficient on-chip light source for the OEIC [1], [2].…”

“…With the data rate increase of integrated circuits, optical interconnections are expected to be an attractive alternative solution for overcoming the limitations encountered by electrical interconnections in the inter-chip communication, such as high crosstalk, high latencies and attenuation, etc. [1], [2]. Inevitably, much attention has been paid to the core devices employed in optical interconnections, for instance light-emitting devices, especially the silicon-based light-emitting devices (Si-LEDs).…”