Abstract
The silicon-based heterostructures composed of silicon nanowire/silver oxide/silver nanodendrite are first demonstrated as functional light emitting sources after electro-activation. The high fill-factor nanoscale out-of-plane heterostructures are fabricated into silicon substrate using low-cost silver nanoparticles assisted wet chemical etching. The emitted light spectrum spanning a visible-NIR range of 400-850 nm is analyzed to excite three predominant intensity peaks with photon energies of 1.87, 2.05 and 2.27 eV under forward biases of 20-50 V, corresponding to the color of dark red, yellow and green. The heterostructure device proposed paves a way to eliminate the use of relatively expensive direct band gap materials for the potential optoelectronic applications, such as optical interconnections and displays. © 2011 Optical Society of America.