Experimental Analysis of Polarization in the Hot-Carrier Luminescence of Silicon Devices

The polarization of light emitted by hot-carriers in silicoin MOSFETs and special purpose test structures is analyzed by meanis of spectrally resolved polarization measurements. The experiments show a siginificant dependence of polarization on the structure and composition of the materials covering the emission area. The results demonstrate that the polarization of hot-carrier light in MOSFETs cannot provide direct indications on the role of different emission mechanisms or on the hot carrier momentum-space distribution, unless the effect of the layers on top of the emission area is appropriately taken into account.