Studies of hot photoluminescence in plasmonically coupled silicon via variable energy excitation and temperature-dependent spectroscopy

By integrating silicon nanowires (∼150 nm diameter, 20 μm length) with an Ω-shaped plasmonic nanocavity, we are able to generate broadband visible luminescence, which is induced by high order hybrid nanocavity-surface plasmon modes. The nature of this super bandgap emission is explored via photoluminescence spectroscopy studies performed with variable laser excitation energies (1.959 to 2.708 eV) and finite difference time domain simulations. Furthermore, temperature-dependent photoluminescence spectroscopy shows that the observed emission corresponds to radiative recombination of unthermalized (hot) carriers as opposed to a resonant Raman process.