(Invited) Photoluminescence Enhancement of a Silicon Nanocrystal Plane Positioned in the Near-Field of a Silicon Nanowire

Semiconductor nanowires (NW) are good candidates for new optoelectronic or photovoltaic devices due to their exceptional ability to guide, scatter or absorb light, from near-ultraviolet to near-infrared. The occurrence of morphology-dependent optical resonances in nanowires opens a route to overcome the intrinsic limitations of some materials (for instance the limited absorption of silicon in the visible spectrum due its indirect band gap) and optimize their interaction with light.

Most optical applications of nanowires were recently focused on photovoltaic devices, because of their enhanced light absorption efficiency, which is also tunable either by the NW diameter, structure or chemical composition. It could be interesting to use the near-field enhancement around the NW induced by the excited resonances, in order to increase the emission of quantum dots or molecules placed in the NW vicinity. Semiconductor NWs could thus be used as optical antennas instead of plasmonic nanostructures, despite a much weaker enhancement, but with the advantages of field enhancement in larger volumes and using a fully compatible CMOS technology.

We investigate the influence of Si -NWs on the photoluminescence of a single plane of Si nanocrystals embedded in a silica matrix. The presence of an individual Si-NW on top of the silica layer, at about 3 nm above the Si-NCs plane, leads to a strong photoluminescence enhancement, by up to a factor of three, depending on the excitation light wavelength and polarization, and the nanowire diameter. This opens a route for improving light emitting devices using Si-based nanowires.