Nano-engineered silicon light emitting diodes and optically active waveguides

In this paper, we first introduce and discuss the current state-of-the-art in integrated silicon photonic technology. We argue that the only missing link to the incorporation of this technology into mainstream high end silicon chips and systems are the availability of fully integrated silicon light sources and amplifiers. We go onto describe how dislocation engineering can be used to nano-engineer, locally, the strain in optically active silicon devices to enable high operating temperatures. We show how, by combining this approach with the incorporation of rare earths, that have optical levels in the near infra-red below the silicon band-gap, a potential route exists to meet these needs. In particular, we show that the use of erbium, together with dislocation engineering, could provide useful optical emission and gain at the important 1.5 μm wavelength that dominates optical data transfer.