Towards a Germanium and Silicon Laser: The History and the Present
by
Ivan Pelant * and Kateřina Kůsová
Ivan Pelant * and Kateřina Kůsová
Institute of Physics, Czech Academy of Sciences, v.v.i., Cukrovarnická 10, 162 00 Prague 6, Czech Republic
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Crystals 2019, 9(12), 624; https://doi.org/10.3390/cryst9120624
Received: 28 October 2019 / Revised: 24 November 2019 / Accepted: 25 November 2019 / Published: 27 November 2019
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Light-Emittting Silicon Nanostructures)
Various theoretical as well as empirical considerations about how to achieve lasing between the conduction and valence bands in indirect band gap semiconductors (germanium and silicon) are reviewed, starting from the dawn of the laser epoch in the beginning of the sixties. While in Ge the room-temperature lasing under electrical pumping has recently been achieved, in Si this objective remains still illusory. The necessity of applying a slightly different approach in Si as opposed to Ge is stressed. Recent advances in the field are discussed, based in particular on light-emitting Si quantum dots.
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Keywords:
lasing; silicon; germanium; indirect band gap; light emission; nanostructures
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Pelant, I.; Kůsová, K. Towards a Germanium and Silicon Laser: The History and the Present. Crystals 2019, 9, 624.
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