Electric pumping of rare-earth-doped silicon for optical emission

摘要

A structure having a p-n junction in a semiconductor having a first p-type region and a first n-type region along with a region located in the vicinity of the p-n junction that is doped with a rare-earth element. In addition, the structure includes a charge source coupled to one of the p-type region and n-type region for providing charge carriers to excite atoms of the rare-earth element. Also provided is a method for producing the structure that includes providing a bipolar junction transistor; doping a region in a collector of the transistor with a rare-earth element; and biasing the transistor to generate light emission from the rare-earth element doped region.