Surface plasmon enhanced light emission from semiconductor materials

Surface plasmon (SP) coupling technique was used to enhance light emissions from semiconductor nanocrystals with evaporated metal layers. We found that the SP coupling can increase the internal quantum efficiencies (IQE) of emission from CdSe-based nanocrystals regardless of the initial efficiencies. This suggests that this technique should be much effective for various materials that suffer from low quantum efficiencies. We also obtained 70-fold enhancement of emission from silicon nanocrystals in silicon dioxide. Obtained IQE value is 38%, which is as large as that of a compound semiconductor with direct transition. The SP coupling technique would bring a great improvement to silicon photonics. (© 2008 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)

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