Luminescence from Silicon and Germanium Nanowires: A Phenomenological Model

Abstract

The room temperature luminescence intensity as a function of the size and the voltage of silicon (Si) and germanium (Ge) nanowires (NWs) having 5 to 30 atoms per wire with diameter ranging from 1.2 nm to 3.5 nm are investigated. The effects of exciton energy states, localized surface states and the quantum confinement are integrated in our phenomenological model to derive an analytical expression for the photoluminescence (PL) and electroluminescence (EL) intensity. By controlling a set of fitting parameters in the model, one can tune the EL and PL peak and intensity. Our results show that both quantum confinement and surface passivation in addition to exciton effects determine the optical and electronic properties of Si and Ge NWs. We observed that the EL and PL intensities occurs at the same energy, however the EL intensity has sharp Gaussian sub peaks and red shifted compared to the PL intensity.