Theoretical study of the emission of light stimulated by phonons in indirect bandgap semiconductor

Abstract

Microelectronic device integration has progressed to the point where complete 'systems-on-a-chip' have been realized. The development of Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (CMOS) technology during the 20th century has permitted the massmanufacture of high-performance electronic devices on silicon at lowcost.However, electronic integration on silicon has encountered some limits mainly due to the heat generated by the high-speed of data transmission required in modern communications. This is the main reason why CMOS-microelectronics giants such as IBM or Intel have included optical interconnects within their chip manufacturing roadmaps in order to ensure the performance of the Moore's law in the next decades. To this end, several basic building blocks with high performance must be developed fully in silicon and employing CMOS processes. Most of these building blocks (waveguides, filters, photodetectors) have been already developed, as mentioned before, within the field of silicon photonics. However, the issue of efficient generation of light in such photonic circuits remains unsolved. The possible induction of light emission from Si, an indirect bandgap material in which radiative transitions are unlikely, raises several interesting and technologically important possibilities, especially the fabrication of a truly integrated optoelectronic microchip. As a consequence, an electrically-pumped laser working at optical communications wavelengths and at room-temperature fully built using silicon is perhaps the most pursued challenge within photonics [1]. © Selection and peer-review under responsibility of FET11 conference organizers and published by Elsevier B.V.