Electrical Driven Light Emitting From a Tunneling Junction With Negative Resistance Effect

We investigate the electrical and optical performance of surface-plasmon-mediated light emission in electrical-driven metal-insulator-metal (MIM) tunnel junctions fabricated from a gold (Au) film on the top and a heavily doped silicon chip on the bottom. A silicon dioxide layer is used as the tunneling barrier. The experimental results show that the device's performance strongly depends on the morphology of the Au film. A negative resistance effect was observed with high Au film roughness, from which higher efficient light emission was observed compared to that of our device exhibiting less roughness. Such MIM tunneling junctions are compatible with common metal-oxide semiconductor technology and thus open up a route toward the development of novel integrated optoelectronic and plasmonic devices.