Design and Fabrication of Three-terminal Carrier-injection-type Si-LED with Standard CMOS Technology

This paper demonstrates a novel carrier-injection-type silicon based light emitting device (LED) with three terminals and high light emission intensity. The device was designed and fabricated in the commercial standard 0.5 μm CMOS process offered by Central Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (CSMC) without any modification. Two shallow diagonal n +p junctions were embedded on the p type substrate. One junction biased in forward mode emits infrared light, and the other is also forward biased to inject carriers into the light emitting region. Experiment results show that, at 10 mA biased current and 3 V modulation voltage, 1 nW optical power can be obtained and it's approximately two orders of magnitude higher than the single junction. Due to the low operating voltage, the device can be monolithic integrated with the current mainstream silicon CMOS technology and shows a great potential in optoelectronic integration field.