Optical doping of materials by erbium ion implantation

The development of silicon compatible optoelectronics would require the fabrication and integration of several optical functions such as waveguides amplifiers, signal processing components and light emitters in silicon or on thin films deposited on silicon. In this paper the optical doping by erbium ion implantation of sodalime silica glass and silicon is presented with the aim to fabricate an amplifier and a light source operating at 1.5 µm. The materials issues currently limiting the performances of these devices are analyzed in detail and the possible future developments are discussed.