THERMAL QUENCHING OF LUMINESCENCE IN ERBIUM-DOPED SEMICONDUCTORS

The nature of the temperature dependence of luminescence intensity fro m Er+ ions in GaInAsP, Si, InP, GaAs, AlGaAs, ZnTe, as observed by Fav ennec et al [1] has been examined in terms of a double exponential mod el. The smaller activation energy is found to be 58-100 meV, character istic of a localized energy barrier at the Er+ centre while the higher activation energy is approximately 0.8 E-q attributed to an Auger non -radiative process of carrier excitation into bands. This model has be en found to describe the observed temperature dependences with reasona bly good agreement.