Light Emission in Metal–Semiconductor Tunnel Junctions: Direct Evidence for Electron Heating by Plasmon Decay

We study metal–insulator–semiconductor tunnel junctions where the metal electrode is a patterned gold layer, the insulator is a thin layer of Al2O3, and the semiconductor is p-type silicon. We observe light emission due to plasmon-assisted inelastic tunneling from the metal to the silicon valence band. The emission cutoff shifts to higher energies with increasing voltage, a clear signature of electrically driven plasmons. The cutoff energy exceeds the applied voltage, and a large fraction of the emission is above the threshold, ℏω > eV. We find that the emission spectrum manifests the Fermi–Dirac distribution of the electrons in the gold electrode. This distribution can be used to determine the effective electron temperature, Te, which is shown to have a linear dependence on the applied voltage. The strong correlation of Te with the plasmon energy serves as evidence that the mechanism for heating the electrons is plasmon decay at the source metal electrode.