Optical properties of crystalline-amorphous core-shell silicon nanowires.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 20815406.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1021/nl102183x.
- No licence information is recorded for this record.
- Because redistribution is not established, this page shows the abstract only. Follow the links below for the full text.
Abstract
The optical absorption in a nanowire heterostructure consisting of a crystalline silicon core surrounded by a conformal shell of amorphous silicon is studied. We show that they exhibit extremely high absorption of 95% at short wavelengths (λ < 550 nm) and a concomitant very low absorption of down to less than 2% at long wavelengths (λ > 780 nm). These results indicate that our nanowires do not have optically active energy levels in the band gap. The absorption edge of silicon nanowires arrays is observed to shift to longer wavelengths as a function of the overall nanowire diameter. The near-infrared absorption of the nanowire array is significantly better than that of thin film amorphous silicon. These properties indicate potential use in large area optoelectronic and photovoltaic applications.