NIR-Emitting Erbium/Oxygen-Doped Silicon by Self-Assembled Techniques

Self-assembled monolayer (SAM) techniques have been developed to dope silicon surfaces with use of erbium radiation sources. After rapid thermal annealing at 1050 oC, surface monolayer structure and dopant concentration distribution were characterized by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and secondary ion mass spectroscopy measurements, respectively. A distinctive 4I13/2 → 4I15/2 transition of erbium ion (4f) glowing at 1.54 μm has been observed at room temperature for these Er/O-doped Si samples. With these preliminary results, it is promising to develop room-temperature silicon-based light-emitting devices and lasers on the basis of these bottom-up SAM techniques.