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A novel polysilicon light emitting device (LED) was realized in a standard complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) process that is based on a p-n junction reverse bias configuration. This LED can emit visible light based on the reverse bias p-n junctions in the dark. The central emitting doped structure element of this LED is n⁺-p-n⁺-p-n⁺ stacked layout, which is similar to two reverse bias p-n junctions and two forward bias p-n junctions connected in series. The device mechanism for the visible light emitting process is defined by means of an avalanche breakdown process that occurs between the highly doped n⁺ region and the lightly doped p region in the reverse bias p-n junctions. By using hot carriers generated in avalanche process, the emission spectrum from the device exhibits a wide spectrum whose wavelength range is from 400 nm to 900 nm at an operating voltage of 16 V. We compare the …