This project, a longstanding collaboration with Domenico Pacifici with initial nanowire epitaxy support from Albert Davydov’s group at NIST-Gaithersburg, focuses on the use of Ge nanostructures for optoelectronic devices.  An early research direction was a foray into Si/Ge heteronanowire tandem solar cells intended to catch a broader part of the solar spectrum. The more long-running and continuing effort has focused on Ge quantum dot (QD) photodetectors with excellent responsivity (up to ~10 A/W due to high internal gain), reasonable speed (~20 ns), and simple CMOS-compatible fabrication.

Funding agencies:
Brown University 2024 Hazeltine Innovation award
NSF DMR–1203186
NSF ECCS-1068895
Brown University seed grant

Key students and post-docs:
Sue Shi (Brown ScM EE 2021)
Stelios Siontas (Brown PhD EE 2018)
Peng Zhang (Brown PhD Physics 2016)
Pei Liu (Brown PhD Physics 2015)