It was noted that dislocation-rich regions could be controllably formed at a certain location within a silicon wafer. The light-emission properties of such regions, located in the electric field of a p–n junction were studied under various excitation conditions. It was found that the luminescence spectra of the dislocations were significantly influenced by the presence of the junction. The dislocation-related luminescence peak position appeared red-shifted due to the built-in electric field. A suppression of that field by photo-generation of carriers or by applying a forward bias voltage at the junction leads to a gradual decrease in the energy position of the peaks. The dependence of the peak position on the electric field was found to be a quadratic function, similar to that observed for semiconductor nanostructures. It was shown that the shift of the peak position was due to the Stark effect on dislocation-related excitonic states. The characteristic constant of the shift, obtained by fitting the data with the quadratic Stark effect equation, was 0.0186meV/(kV/cm)2.

Silicon Based Light Emitters Utilizing Radiation from Dislocations; Electric Field Induced Shift of the Dislocation-Related Luminescence. T.Arguirov, T.Mchedlidze, M.Kittler, M.Reiche, T.Wilhelm, T.Hoang, J.Holleman, J.Schmitz: Physica E, 2009, 41[6], 907-11