Silicon–O–M–O–silicon superlattice

The success of heterojunction quantum wells and quantum dots in III–Vs has not been extended to silicon because the ideal barrier, SiO2, is amorphous, preventing the formation of quantum structures with silicon. The possibility of a few monolayers of oxide inserted between adjacent silicon layers was proposed and realized with a superlattice (SL) structure consisting of Si–Si–O–Si–Si–Si, having a monolayer of oxygen in each period introduced by adsorption onto the 2×1 reconstructed surface along the Si(1 0 0). Reduction of the period leads to a slight up-shift of the energy of the emitted light, indicating that the essential objective of boosting the optical transition by promoting direct transitions has not been realized. Annealing in H2+O2 results in significant improvement in PL and EL, showing that specific defects, e.g., Si–O complexes may be responsible for the observed light emission. The role of Si–O complex being the origin of emission is further supported by the observation that the emission of visible light from polycrystalline Si and SiO2 structure is similar to the epitaxial superlattice with oxygen. The computed strain in a new type of superlattices consisting of SiO2, and GeO2 is much lower than the Si–O SL. The EL in Si–O superlattice with the use of a Schottky barrier to provide electron–hole accumulation allows double injection into states higher in energy than the bandgap of Si, a prerequisite for injection laser without the need to use a wide-band pn-junction.