Room-temperature 1.3 μm electroluminescence from strained Si _1-xGe_x/Si quantum wells

We report the first room-temperature 1.3 μm electroluminescence from strained Si_1-xGe_x/Si quantum wells. The electroluminescence is due to band-edge carrier recombination, and its intensity increases linearly with the forward current up to 1700 A/cm². The internal quantum efficiency is estimated to have a lower limit of 2×10^-4. As the temperature is increased from 77 to 300 K, luminescence from the silicon increases relative to that from the Si _1-xGe_x wells. A minimum band offset is required to have effective room-temperature luminescence from the Si_1-xGe_x quantum wells.