Temperature dependence of the electron-hole-plasma electroluminescence from metal-oxide-silicon tunneling diodes

The temperature performance of metal-oxide-silicon tunneling light-emitting diodes was studied. An electron-hole-plasma model can be used to fit all the emission spectra from room temperature to 98 K. At constant voltage bias in the accumulation region, the normalized integral emission intensity slightly increases at low temperature with activation energy as low as 12 meV. From room temperature down to 98 K, the extracted band gaps are similar to 80 meV lower than the value of Varshni equation, and the linewidth drops from 65 to 30 meV. The transverse optical and longitudinal optical phonons are involved in the light-emission process due to the reduction of extracted band gaps and the resemblance between electroluminescence and photoluminescence spectra at similar temperature. (C) 2000 American Institute of Physics. [S0003-6951(00)01934-3].