Observation of light emission from real-space transfer devices

Light emitters based on real-space transfer devices can be brought about by several mechanisms. The most efficient of these is the injection of minority electrons across a semiconductor heterojunction into a p-type collecting layer. So far, problems associated with the growth of p-type collecting layers have hindered efforts in this area. In this letter we report on light emission caused by the real-space transfer of majority electrons into an n-type collecting layer. We propose a mechanism to account for this light which consists of hole creation by impact ionization of real-space transferred electrons.