Room-temperature ballistic electron emission luminescence spectroscopy with a scanning tunneling microscope

We present a luminescence spectroscopy for semiconductor heterostructures based on local hot electron injection from a scanning tunneling microscope tip. In addition to a tip voltage bias exceeding the metal-semiconductor Schottky barrier height, this process requires a collector bias voltage to satisfy energy conservation. These results indicate that this method could be used to study local electron transport and simultaneous electroluminescence in buried luminescent layers at depths greater than the ballistic electron mean free path in the collector.