Ion beam fabricated silicon light emitting diodes

The addition of efficient optical emission to the functionality of crystalline silicon, because of its already dominant position for use in electronic devices and for integrated circuit production, is highly desired. Applications include optical interconnects on chip and between chips - needed to solve future data transfer limitations associated with current copper technology, cheap fibre-to-the-home transceivers, and many others. A solution using ion implantation is the optimum route given the ubiquitous role of this process in silicon technology. In this paper the use of a new method to fabricate silicon based light emitting devices, dislocation engineering, that allows to circumvent the fundamental problem caused by the indirect gap in silicon, is described. This approach is entirely compatible with current ULSI technology, a key requirement given the very high tool-up costs associated with silicon integrated circuit production. (C) 2004 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.