Hot electron engineering for boosting electroluminescence efficiencies of silicon-rich nitride light emitting devices

The combination of a SiO2 electron accelerator layer with a silicon-rich nitride layer forming a bilayer embedded in a metal-oxide-semiconductor structure has proved to enhance the integrated visible-infrared EL intensity by more than two orders of magnitude in comparison to the single-layer electroluminescent device approach. The origin of such an improvement is attributed to the massive ionization of defects in the silicon-rich nitride layer by direct impact of injected hot electrons coming from the SiO2 conduction band. Our premises are further corroborated by performing a thorough study of the charge transport in the bilayer structure. This study displays a main electrical mechanism at steady state that combines hot-electron tunneling injection from the SiO2 accelerator layer and space charge-limited current enhanced by Poole-Frenkel conduction from the silicon-rich nitride electroluminescent layer. The proposed electrical mechanism is validated by numerical simulations that provide good agreement with the experimental behavior. These results point out the feasibility of boosting electroluminescence efficiency of Si-based light emitting devices by performing an adequate gate stack engineering that maximizes the hot-electron injection into the electroluminescent layer.