Extracting optical absorption characteristics from semiconductor nanowire arrays.

A method based on extraction of the effective absorption coefficient using Beer-Lambert's law on simulated transmissions is used to understand the optical absorption characteristics of semiconductor nanowire arrays. Three different semiconductor nanowire arrays, viz. silicon (Si), gallium arsenide (GaAs) and amorphous silicon (a-Si), are evaluated using the method. These semiconductors were chosen since two of them have similar real parts of the refractive index in the visible range, while the other two have comparable imaginary parts of the refractive index in the visible range. We examine the roles of the real and imaginary parts of the refractive index in enhancing the absorption characteristics in the nanowire arrays due to the excitation of radial and photonic Bloch modes. We observe that high absorption peaks at modal resonances correspond to the resonance peaks in reflections from the nanowire-air interface. Further, the wavelengths of these two peak resonances are slightly detuned according to the Kramers-Kronig relation for an oscillator system. The study confirms that the resonance wavelengths of radial HE modes are diameter and refractive index dependent. The study extends the understanding to the absorption characteristics due to the excitation of the photonic Bloch modes caused by near-field coupling. Excitation of Bloch modes leads to increased absorption and quality factor as compared to only radial mode excitation. We also conclude that the imaginary part of the refractive index of the semiconductor, influence the diameters at which Bloch modes are excited for a given lattice spacing. We observe that semiconductors with a higher bulk value of absorption coefficient need to be ordered more densely in the nanowire array to be able to excite the photonic crystal modes within the array. Interestingly, we see that for Si, GaAs and a-Si arrays with an equal diameter of 80 nm and lattice spacing of 400 nm, the peak absorption is almost the same, even though GaAs and a-Si are highly absorptive materials compared to Si. Thus, both radial and Bloch mode excitations can be used to design absorption profiles in a semiconductor nanowire array.

Tuning the Luminescence Response of an Air-Hole Photonic Crystal Slab Using Etching Depth Variation.

Detailed studies of the luminescent properties of the Si-based 2D photonic crystal (PhC) slabs with air holes of various depths are reported. Ge self-assembled quantum dots served as an internal light source. It was obtained that changing the air hole depth is a powerful tool which allows tuning of the optical properties of the PhC. It was shown that increasing the depth of the holes in the PhC has complex influences on its overall photoluminescence (PL) response due to the simultaneous influences of counteracting factors. As a result, the maximal increase in the PL signal of more than two orders of magnitude was obtained for some intermediate, but not full, depth of the PhC's air holes. It was demonstrated that it is possible to engineer the PhC band structure in such a way as to construct specific states, namely bound states in continuum (BIC), with specially designed dispersion curves being relatively flat. In this case, such states manifest themselves as sharp peaks in the PL spectra, and have high Q-factors which are larger than those of radiative modes and other BIC modes without such a flat dispersion characteristic.

Interaction of Ge(Si) Self-Assembled Nanoislands with Different Modes of Two-Dimensional Photonic Crystal.

The interaction of Ge(Si)/SOI self-assembled nanoislands with modes of photonic crystal slabs (PCS) with a hexagonal lattice is studied in detail. Appropriate selection of the PCS parameters and conditions for collecting the photoluminescence (PL) signal allowed to distinguish the PCS modes of different physical nature, particularly the radiative modes and modes associated to the bound states in the continuum (BIC). It is shown that the radiative modes with relatively low Q-factors could provide a increase greater than an order of magnitude in the integrated PL intensity in the wavelength range of 1.3-1.55 µm compared to the area outside of PCS at room temperature. At the same time, the interaction of Ge(Si) islands emission with the BIC-related modes provides the peak PL intensity increase of more than two orders of magnitude. The experimentally measured Q-factor of the PL line associated with the symmetry-protected BIC mode reaches the value of 2600.