Enhanced Electroluminescence Efficiency in Si-Nanostructure-Based Silicon-Nitride Light-Emitting Diodes via H2 Plasma Treatment

Abstract

The improved performance of Si quantum dot-based silicon nitride light-emitting devices with the inserted hole-blocking nc-Si layer was investigated. An enhanced electroluminescence (EL) efficiency of 200% from the SiNx-based LEDs is demonstrated through H2 plasma treatment of the inserted nc-Si layer. The enhancement of an EL efficiency is depended on time for plasma treatment. Moreover, the injected current of the devices with H2 plasma treatment is significantly higher than that of the device without H2 plasma treatment under the same driving voltage. The Z-parameter of the devices increases from 1.25 to 1.41 after H2 plasma treatment of inserted nc-Si layer. The inserted nc-Si layers with and without H2 plasma treatment were further investigated by the Raman spectroscopy and the Fourier transform infrared absorption spectroscopy, respectively. It is suggested that the improved EL efficiency is due to the suppression of nonradiative recombination, which resulted from the hydrogen passivation that effectively reducing Si-related defect states of the inserted nc-Si layer.

Keywords

• Silicon nitride
• electroluminescence
• $_{2}$ plasma treatment%22%2C%22default_operator%22%3A%22AND%22%7D%7D%7D"> H<inline-formula xmlns:ali="http://www.niso.org/schemas/ali/1.0/" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$_{2}$</tex-math> </inline-formula> plasma treatment
• nanocrystalline (nc)-Si layer.