Light emission measurements: a promising tool to identify hot carrier phenomena

We show how light emission in modern submicrometric semiconductor devices can be used to extract much information about microscopic mechanisms (high energy carrier related phenomena: impact ionization, real space transfer, radiative energy loss mechanisms) and how they depend on device bias voltages and temperature. From emitted light analysis we obtained a clear evidence of impact ionization in the studied devices, a satisfactory evaluation of the effective temperature of carriers, a measurement of energy band gap of the channel semiconductor material