NER: Novel Electrochemically Self Assembled Nanowire Infrared Photodetectors

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This research is focused on demonstrating novel ROOM TEMPERATUREinfrared photodetectors based on electrochemically self assembled nanowirearrays. Photodetection is based on photoexcitation of electrons fromsubband states in the nanowire to trap states in the surroundinginsulator. This leads to an "inverse" photodetection effect whereby the conductivity of the photodetector drops when irradiated with infrared radiation.Preliminary experiments [Appl. Phys. Lett., Vol. 79, 4423 (2001)] haveshown that these photodetectors can operate at room temperature with asignal to noise ratio of 45 dB. The purpose of the NER project willbe to extend this result to create (1) multi-colored detectors usingdifferent sized nanowires self assembled on the same wafer, and (2) acomplementary photodetector where a normal photodetector is synthesizedin series with an inverse photodetector. The complementary photodetectorwill be able to detect a very narrow band.This research will involve significant work by undergraduate students.The samples that exhibited the novel photodetection effect wereprepared by an undergraduate student in the PI's lab.