Electroluminescence of Rare-Earth and Transition Metal Molecules in Ii-Vi Compounds via Impact Excitation

It is shown experimentally that it is possible to excite rare-earth and transition metal ions included in a II-VI compound matrix as fluoride molecules by direct, hot-electron impact. Electron-hole pairs in the matrix are unnecessary and even undesirable. AC excitation of a thin film structure has given external power conversion efficiency of about 10−4 at several optical frequencies including the 5480-Å line of Tb3+.