Extreme absorption enhancement in ZnTe:O/ZnO intermediate band core-shell nanowires by interplay of dielectric resonance and plasmonic bowtie nanoantennas

Kui-Ying Nie; Jing Li; Xuanhu Chen; Yang Xu; Xuecou Tu; Fang-Fang Ren; Qingguo Du; Lan Fu; Lin Kang; Kun Tang; Shulin Gu; Rong Zhang; Peiheng Wu; Youdou Zheng; Hark Hoe Tan; Chennupati Jagadish; Jiandong Ye

doi:10.1038/s41598-017-07970-7

Extreme absorption enhancement in ZnTe:O/ZnO intermediate band core-shell nanowires by interplay of dielectric resonance and plasmonic bowtie nanoantennas

Sci Rep. 2017 Aug 8;7(1):7503. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-07970-7.

Authors

Kui-Ying Nie^{1

2}, Jing Li¹, Xuanhu Chen¹, Yang Xu¹, Xuecou Tu¹, Fang-Fang Ren^{3

4

5}, Qingguo Du⁶, Lan Fu⁷, Lin Kang¹, Kun Tang¹, Shulin Gu¹, Rong Zhang¹, Peiheng Wu¹, Youdou Zheng¹, Hark Hoe Tan⁷, Chennupati Jagadish⁷, Jiandong Ye^{8

9

10}

Affiliations

¹ School of Electronic Science and Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210093, China.
² School of Physics and Engineering, Xingyi Normal University for Nationalities, Xingyi, 562400, China.
³ School of Electronic Science and Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210093, China. ffren@nju.edu.cn.
⁴ Department of Electronic Materials Engineering, Research School of Physics and Engineering, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia. ffren@nju.edu.cn.
⁵ Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210093, China. ffren@nju.edu.cn.
⁶ School of Information Engineering, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, 430070, China. qingguo.du@whut.edu.cn.
⁷ Department of Electronic Materials Engineering, Research School of Physics and Engineering, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia.
⁸ School of Electronic Science and Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210093, China. yejd@nju.edu.cn.
⁹ Department of Electronic Materials Engineering, Research School of Physics and Engineering, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia. yejd@nju.edu.cn.
¹⁰ Collaborative Innovation Center of Solid-State Lighting and Energy-Saving Electronics, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210093, China. yejd@nju.edu.cn.

Abstract

Intermediate band solar cells (IBSCs) are conceptual and promising for next generation high efficiency photovoltaic devices, whereas, IB impact on the cell performance is still marginal due to the weak absorption of IB states. Here a rational design of a hybrid structure composed of ZnTe:O/ZnO core-shell nanowires (NWs) with Al bowtie nanoantennas is demonstrated to exhibit strong ability in tuning and enhancing broadband light response. The optimized nanowire dimensions enable absorption enhancement by engineering leaky-mode dielectric resonances. It maximizes the overlap of the absorption spectrum and the optical transitions in ZnTe:O intermediate-band (IB) photovoltaic materials, as verified by the enhanced photoresponse especially for IB states in an individual nanowire device. Furthermore, by integrating Al bowtie antennas, the enhanced exciton-plasmon coupling enables the notable improvement in the absorption of ZnTe:O/ZnO core-shell single NW, which was demonstrated by the profound enhancement of photoluminescence and resonant Raman scattering. The marriage of dielectric and metallic resonance effects in subwavelength-scale nanowires opens up new avenues for overcoming the poor absorption of sub-gap photons by IB states in ZnTe:O to achieve high-efficiency IBSCs.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't