Light Emitting Silicon for Microphotonics

Book excerpt: A fascinating insight into the state-of-the-art in silicon microphotonics and on what we can expect in the near future. The book presents an overview of the current understanding of getting light from silicon. It concentrates mainly on low dimensional silicon structures, like quantum dots, wires and wells, but covers also alternative approaches like porous silicon and the doping of silicon with rare-earths. The emphasis is on the experimental and theoretical achievements concerning the optoelectronic properties of confined silicon structures obtained during recent years. Silicon based photonic crystals are in particular considered. An in depth discussion of the route towards a silicon laser is presented.