In this thesis we are discussing the occurrence of visible (white) light from silicon, which occurs in reverse polarized silicon pn junction. Despite the fact, that silicon is indirect semiconductor and its band gap dictates its photon energy in infrared spectrum, the resulting light is in visible spectrum. This phenomenon is interesting for potential usage in certain photonic applications. The basic mechanisms responsible for emission of aforementioned light and impact of these mechanisms on spectrum of this light are described. Then we present our experiment and describe the results. In this experiment we used reverse polarized base-emitter junction of bipolar transistor.
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