Quasiballistic quantum transport through Ge/Si core/shell nanowires.

We study signatures of ballistic quantum transport of holes through Ge/Si core/shell nanowires at low temperatures. We observe Fabry-Pérot interference patterns as well as conductance plateaus at integer multiples of 2e 2/h at zero magnetic field. Magnetic field evolution of these plateaus reveals relatively large effective Landé g-factors. Ballistic effects are observed in nanowires with silicon shell thickness of 1-3 nm, but not in bare germanium wires. These findings inform the future development of spin and topological quantum devices which rely on ballistic sub-band-resolved transport.

Mapping carrier diffusion in single silicon core-shell nanowires with ultrafast optical microscopy.

Recent success in the fabrication of axial and radial core-shell heterostructures, composed of one or more layers with different properties, on semiconductor nanowires (NWs) has enabled greater control of NW-based device operation for various applications. (1-3) However, further progress toward significant performance enhancements in a given application is hindered by the limited knowledge of carrier dynamics in these structures. In particular, the strong influence of interfaces between different layers in NWs on transport makes it especially important to understand carrier dynamics in these quasi-one-dimensional systems. Here, we use ultrafast optical microscopy (4) to directly examine carrier relaxation and diffusion in single silicon core-only and Si/SiO(2) core-shell NWs with high temporal and spatial resolution in a noncontact manner. This enables us to reveal strong coherent phonon oscillations and experimentally map electron and hole diffusion currents in individual semiconductor NWs for the first time.

Highly efficient charge separation and collection across in situ doped axial VLS-grown Si nanowire p-n junctions.

VLS-grown semiconductor nanowires have emerged as a viable prospect for future solar-based energy applications. In this paper, we report highly efficient charge separation and collection across in situ doped Si p-n junction nanowires with a diameter <100 nm grown in a cold wall CVD reactor. Our photoexcitation measurements indicate an internal quantum efficiency of ~50%, whereas scanning photocurrent microscopy measurements reveal effective minority carrier diffusion lengths of ~1.0 µm for electrons and 0.66 µm for holes for as-grown Si nanowires (d(NW) ≈ 65-80 nm), which are an order of magnitude larger than those previously reported for nanowires of similar diameter. Further analysis reveals that the strong suppression of surface recombination is mainly responsible for these relatively long diffusion lengths, with surface recombination velocities (S) calculated to be 2 orders of magnitude lower than found previously for as-grown nanowires, all of which used hot wall reactors. The degree of surface passivation achieved in our as-grown nanowires is comparable to or better than that achieved for nanowires in prior studies at significantly larger diameters. We suggest that the dramatically improved surface recombination velocities may result from the reduced sidewall reactions and deposition in our cold wall CVD reactor.

ZnO nanowire UV photodetectors with high internal gain.

ZnO nanowire (NW) visible-blind UV photodetectors with internal photoconductive gain as high as G approximately 108 have been fabricated and characterized. The photoconduction mechanism in these devices has been elucidated by means of time-resolved measurements spanning a wide temporal domain, from 10-9 to 102 s, revealing the coexistence of fast (tau approximately 20 ns) and slow (tau approximately 10 s) components of the carrier relaxation dynamics. The extremely high photoconductive gain is attributed to the presence of oxygen-related hole-trap states at the NW surface, which prevents charge-carrier recombination and prolongs the photocarrier lifetime, as evidenced by the sensitivity of the photocurrrent to ambient conditions. Surprisingly, this mechanism appears to be effective even at the shortest time scale investigated of t < 1 ns. Despite the slow relaxation time, the extremely high internal gain of ZnO NW photodetectors results in gain-bandwidth products (GB) higher than approximately 10 GHz. The high gain and low power consumption of NW photodetectors promise a new generation of phototransistors for applications such as sensing, imaging, and intrachip optical interconnects.