Silicon, the leading material in microelectronics during the last four decades, also promises to be the key material in the future. Despite many claims that silicon technology has reached fundamental limits, the performance of silicon microelectronics continues to improve steadily. The same holds for almost all the applications for which Si was considered to be unsuitable. The main exception to this positive trend is the silicon laser, which has not been demonstrated to date. The main reason for this comes from a fundamental limitation related to the indirect nature of the Si band-gap. In the recent past, many different approaches have been taken to achieve this goal: dislocated silicon, extremely pure silicon, silicon nanocrystals, porous silicon, Er doped Si-Ge, SiGe alloys and multiquantum wells, SiGe quantum dots, SiGe quantum cascade structures, shallow impurity centers in silicon and Er doped silicon. All of these are abundantly illustrated in the present book.

Autorentext
Lorenzo Pavesi is Professor of experimental physics at the university of Trento (Italy). Born the 21st of november 1961, he received his master degree in physics in 1985 at the university of trento and the phd in physics in 1990 at the ecole polytechnique federale of lausanne (switzerland). in 1990 he became assistant professor, an associate professor in 1999 and full professor in 2002 at the university of trento. He organized several international conferences, workshops and schools and is a frequent invited speaker. He manages several research projects, both national and european.

Inhalt
High efficiency silicon light emitting diodes.- Dislocation-based silicon light emitting devices.- Efficient electroluminescence in alloyed silicon diodes.- Light emitting devices based on silicon nanocrystals.- Optical and electrical characteristics of LEDs fabricated from Si-nanocrystals. embedded in SiO2.- Electroluminescence in Si/SiO2 Layers.- Reverse biased porous silicon light emitting diodes.- Strong blue light emission from ion implanted Si/SiO2 structures.- Si/Ge nanostructures for LED.- Optical spectroscopy of single silicon quantum dots.- Luminescence from Si/SiO2 nanostructures.- Electronic and dielectric properties of porous silicon.- Silicon technology used for size-controlled silicon nanocrystals.- Structural and optical properties of silicon nanocrystals embedded in Silicon Oxide films.- Stimulated emission in silicon nanocrystals Gain measurement and rate equation modelling.- Lasing effects in ultrasmall silicon nanoparticles.- On fast optical gain in silicon nanostructures.- Experimental observation of optical amplification in silicon nanocrystals.- Optical amplification in nanocrystalline silicon superlattices.- Optical gain from silicon nanocrystals a critical perspective.- Optical gain measurements with variable stripe length technique.- Theory of silicon nanocrystals.- Gain theory and models in silicon nanostructures Paper dedicated to the memory of Claudio Bertarini.- Si-Ge quantum dot laser: What can we learn from III-V experience?.- Promising SiGe superlattice and quantum well laser candidates.- Optical properties of arrays of Ge/Si quantum dots in electric field.- MBE of Si-Ge heterostructures with Ge nanocrystals.- Strain compensated Si/SiGe quantum cascade emitters grown on SiGe pseudosubstrates.- Terahertz silicon lasers: Intracentre optical pumping.- Silicon lasers based on shallow donor centres: Theoretical background and experimental results.- Resonant states in modulation doped SiGe Heterostructures as a source of THz lasing.- THz lasing of strained p-Ge and Si/Ge structures.- Terahertz emission from Silicon-Germanium quantum cascades.- Towards an Er-doped Si nanocrystal sensitized waveguide laser The thin line between gain and loss.- Optical gain using nanocrystal sensitized Erbium: NATO-Series.- Excitation mechanism of Er photoluminescence in bulk Si and SiO2 with nanocrystals.- SiGe/Si:Er light emitting transistors.- SMBE grown uniformly and selectively doped Si:Er structures for LEDs and lasers.- UV-Blue lasers based on InGaN/GaN/Al2O3 and on InGaN/GaN/Si heterostrutures.- Silicon microphotonics: the next killer technology.- List of Participants.