Highly Responsive Switchable Broadband Photodetector and Tunable Light-Emitter Enabled by AlGaN Based Nanowire on Silicon Substrate for Integrated Photonics

Low-dimensional semiconductor nanostructures, particularly in the form of nanowire configurations with large surface-to-volume-ratio, offer intriguing optoelectronic properties for the advancement of integrated photonic technologies. Here we report a bias-controlled, superior dual-functional broadband light detecting and emitting diode enabled by constructing the alluminum-gallium-nitride-based p-n nanowire on Si-platform. Strikingly, the diode exhibits a stable and high responsivity (R) of over 200 mA/W covering an extremely wide operation band under reverse bias conditions, ranging from deep ultraviolet (DUV: 254 nm) to near-infrared (NIR: 1000 nm) spectrum region. While at zero bias, it still possesses superior DUV light selectivity with a high off-rejection ratio of 106. When it comes to the operation of the light-emitting mode under forward bias, it can achieve large spectral changes from UV to red simply by coating colloid quantum dots on the nanowires. Based on the multifunctional features of the diodes, we further employed them in various optoelectronic systems, demonstrating outstanding applications in multicolor imaging, filterless color discrimination, and DUV/NIR visualization. Such highly responsive broadband photodetector with a tunable emitter enabled by III-V nanowire on silicon provides a new avenue towards the realization of integrated photonics and holds great promise for future applications in communication, sensing, imaging, and visualization.