Direct band-gap electroluminescence from strained n-doped germanium diodes

Philippe Velha, Kevin Gallacher, Derek Dumas, Douglas J. Paul

University of Glasgow, School of Engineering, Rankine Buidling, Oakeld Avenue, G12 8LT, Glasgow, U.K. philippe.velha@glasgow.ac.uk

Maksym Myronov, David R. Leadley

University of Warwick, Department of Physics, Coventry, CV4 7AL, U.K.

Abstract: The fabrication and characterisation of LED structures made of Ge grown on Si substrates is reported. The structures are circular mesa of strained n-Ge etched down to an undoped buffer of Ge. The electroluminescence exhibit average power levels at 1.7 m of 10 W, many orders of magnitude larger than the nW previously reported. 3 individual mechanisms of emission are identied which can be used to interpret the results encountered in other publications. This work potentially opens the route for integrated source of light and photodetectors above 1.6 m on Si with applications for lab-on-a-chip and healthcare.
2011 Optical Society of America
OCIS codes: 230.3620,250.0250, 250.3140, 250.5230, 250.5960, 300.0300, 300.6230, 300.6470

Recently, Ge has regained interest in electronics, photonics and spintronics for its appealing intrinsic properties (high mobility and band edge absorption at 1.6 m). Ge on Si is also attractive for integrating additional functionality with Si electronics in More than Moore applications. Previous works [14] demonstrated electroluminescence (EL) from p-i-n structure [2] or other congurations grown on top of a standard Si wafers, which potentially opens the route towards an integrated Ge light source. Two key elements of the LED structure are rst the use of tensile strain to reduce the -valley to L-valley energy and second heavily-doped n-Ge material which allows the Fermi level to be in the -valley. In this work, electroluminescent devices were fabricated and then characterised. A 650 nm strain relaxed virtual substrate of undoped Ge was directly grown onto a 200 mm p -Si (001) wafer by an ASM Epsilon 2000E CVD tool using the method described in [5]. Then 300 nm of n-Ge with ND 3 1019 cm3 phosphorus was grown at 450 o C. Once cooled to 293 K, the n-Ge possesses 0.25 % of tensile strain as measured by photoluminescence. Cylindrical mesas were dened by e-beam lithography and then etched down 600 nm using a uorine based chemistry in an ICP etch tool. Al was deposited for the top electrode on top of the n-Ge and for the bottom electrode Al was deposited on the undoped Ge around the mesa. The structure is covered with Si3 N4 and then via holes are etched to allow interconnects to the contacts. The electrodes were not annealed to produce Schottky contacts which may allow injection of electrons and holes above the band edge. This is particularly important for the conduction band where some of the electrons will be injected into the valley and recombine emitting photons before they can be scattered to any of the few available states in the L-valley conduction band minima. The nal device was wire bonded in order to connect the device to an external power supply. The spectra from 0.5 eV ( = 2.5 m) to1 eV (1 m)) of the LEDs was taken with a FTIR system using a CaF beamsplitter and an extended InGaAs detector. The Fig. 1(a) shows a series of spectra obtained for different injection currents. From this series of measurement it is easy to recognise 3 different peaks which can be identied as 3 different mechanisms of emission. First, all the spectra exhibit a strong peak at 0.5 eV which is the black body emission of the sample due to Joule heating. This peak is present even when the current is switched off and a black body source can be used in order to measure the dependence of the peak with temperature. A heating element shows an increase and a shift of this peak with respect to the temperature. CW measurements demonstrate that a large amount (in excess of 20 mW) of the emission is due to this mechanism. Second, there is the presence of a broad and low intensity peak around 0.66 eV which corresponds to the radiative recombination from the indirect band-gap of the Ge. Finally, at around 0.75 eV there is a peak that can be identied as the direct bandgap radiative recombination. In the direct recombination case, the linewidth is narrower and much more intense than the black body or indirect bandgap emission. In Fig. 1(b) the indirect and direct band-gap recombination is plotted after subtracting the contribution of the black body. In Fig. 2 the L-I curves of a LED in both the continuous and pulsed regimes are plotted. The power was measured using a power meter set at a wavelength of 1.7 m (730 meV) placed directly above the LED. The power meter is

Fig. 1. (a) Electroluminescence spectrum obtained from a LED of 300 m of diameter for different CW current excitation.(b )Details of the peaks of 3 spectra without the black body contribution.

780
Peak position (meV)

30

770 760

20
CW

power

750
Pulsed

10

740 730

0 0 200 400 600 800

2

720 1000

Current density (A/cm )

Fig. 2. typical L-I curve of an LED in continuous and pulsed regime. The position of the peak of the direct band-gap transition is indicated as well

sensitive only to average power thus the values reported for the pulsed regime are average values. From this measurements it is possible to determine how each mechanism plays an important role in the emission of the Ge LED. In the pulsed regime (1 s pulses and 5 s period), the contribution of the black body is drastically reduced and the direct transition becomes dominant. Due to the high doping levels in the n-Ge, the radiative emission is likely to be limited by Auger recombination. The strained-Ge has a smaller -valley to L-valley energy than bulk which results in a better efciency for the direct band-gap emission through recombination. The quality of the heterolayer material, the doping density and the strain (from growth and process induced strain) used in these devices are the key elements that enable a signicant increase in the amount of electroluminescent power. We believe that such devices could play an important role in the development of integrated light sources and detectors on Si above 1.6 m which are needed for applications including lab-on-a-chip and health care monitoring. The technique could potentially also be used for electrically injected Ge on Si lasers. References 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. M. de Kersauson, R. Jakomin, M. El Kurdi, G. Beaudoin, N. Zerounian et al., J. Appl. Phys. 108, 023105 (2010) X. Sun, J. Liu, L.C. Kimerling, J. Michel, Opt. Lett. 34, 1198 (2009) S.-L. Cheng, G. Shambat, J. Lu, H.-Y. Yu, K. Saraswat, et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 98, 211101 (2011) S.L. Cheng, J. Lu, G. Shambat, H.-Y. Yu, K. Saraswat, J. Vuckovic, & Y. Nishi, Opt. Exp. 17, 10019 (2009) V.A. Shah, A. Dobbie, M. Myronov and D.R. Leadley, Solid State Electron. 62, 189 (2011)