Room-temperature 1.3 μm electroluminescence from strained Si1−xGex/Si quantum wells

We report the first room-temperature 1.3 μm electroluminescence from strained Si1−xGex/Si quantum wells. The electroluminescence is due to band-edge carrier recombination, and its intensity increases linearly with the forward current up to 1700 A/cm2. The internal quantum efficiency is estimated to have a lower limit of 2×10−4. As the temperature is increased from 77 to 300 K, luminescence from the silicon increases relative to that from the Si1−xGex wells. A minimum band offset is required to have effective room-temperature luminescence from the Si1−xGex quantum wells.