Novel nanowires for a new generation of technology
The EPFL Laboratory of Semiconductor Materials has developed a novel nanowire based heterostructure adding new advanced functionalities. In collaboration with the University of Barcelona they have now published their results on ACS Nano journal.
Semiconductor nanowires are building blocks for future generations of devices in areas such as functional nanoelectronic devices, batteries and solar cells.
For this to become a reality, the mastering of the nanowire morphology, composition, and structure as well as the possibility to form heterostructures within the nanowire is necessary.
GaAs nanowires are grown by a catalyst-free method that guarantees the formation of high quality crystal structures and avoids the use of external metal-catalysts (like Au) that would endanger any device application.
The functionality of this nanowire-quantum dots heterostucture has been demonstrated by low temperature photoluminescence experiments, which reveal excitation of single and double excitons in the quantum dots.
This new type of heterostructures opens a new avenue to the fabrication of highly efficient single-photon sources, novel quantum optics experiments, as well as the realization of intermediate-band nanowire solar cells for third-generation photovoltaics.