Can impact excitation explain efficient carrier multiplication in carbon nanotube photodiodes?

Roi Baer*, Eran Rabani

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

40 Scopus citations

Abstract

We address recent experiments (Science 2009, 325, 1367) reporting on highly efficient multiplication of electron-hole pairs in carbon nanotube photodiodes at photon energies near the carrier multiplication threshold (twice the quasi-particle band gap). This result is surprising in light of recent experimental and theoretical work on multiexciton generation in other confined materials, such as semiconducting nanocrystals. We propose a detailed mechanism based on carrier dynamics and impact excitation resulting in highly efficient multiplication of electron-hole pairs. We discuss the important time and energy scales of the problem and provide analysis of the role of temperature and the length of the diode.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)3277-3282
Number of pages6
JournalNano Letters
Volume10
Issue number9
DOIs
StatePublished - 8 Sep 2010

Keywords

  • Carbon nanotubes
  • diode
  • impact excitation
  • multiexcitons
  • photocurrents

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