Spontaneous emission rate enhancement of nano-structured silicon by surface plasmon polariton

Abstract

Surface plasmon polariton (SPP) is an attractive candidate to improve internal quantum efficiency (QE) of spontaneous emission (SE) from nano-structured silicon (Si) including nano-porous silicon (NP-Si) and silicon nanocrystal (Si-NC). Since the SPP resonant frequency of common metals, e.g., gold (Au), silver (Ag), copper (Cu), and aluminum (Al), is too high, the SPP resonance has to be engineered to match the luminescence from nano-structured Si. For this purpose, we have proposed and demonstrated three approaches including metal-rich Au(1-α)-SiO₂(α) cermet SPP waveguide (WG), compound layer structure WG and metallic grating. In this paper, those approaches are reviewed and discussed. According to the calculated results, such three methods could effectively enhance SE rate from NP-Si or Si-NCs and show potential in developing high efficiency Si based light sources with electric pump.

Keywords

spontaneous emission (SE) / silicon nanocrystal (Si-NC) / surface plasmon polariton (SPP) / Purcell effect

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Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg