Title: Nanophotonics for Optoelectronic Devices
Description: The demand for high data rate communications and renewable energy sources has led to new materials and platforms for optoelectronic devices, which require nanometer scale feature sizes. Devices that operate in the visible and near-infrared commonly have active areas with dimensions on the order of the diffraction limit λ/2^n, where λ is the free space wavelength and n is the index of refraction, for which the ray optics modeling techniques and bulk focusing optics traditionally used in optoelectronic device design are no longer applicable. In this subwavelength regime, nanophotonic light-trapping strategies are required to localize electromagnetic fields in the active area. This dissertation details the application of nanophotonics to two optoelectronic systems: extrinsic photodetectors for silicon photonics and light-trapping in organic photovoltaics. Error-free reception of 10 Gb/s data at λ = 1.55 μm is demonstrated with a Si⁺ ion-implanted silicon waveguide photodiode. To mitigate the relatively small absorption coefficient of ion-implanted silicon, resonant cavity enhancement using in-line Fabry-Pérot and 1D photonic crystal cavities, as well as slow light enhancement using a coupled resonator optical waveguide are discussed.

The extension of these photodiodes to the mid-infrared is demonstrated using Zn⁺ implantation to detect over a range of λ = 2.2-2.4 μm, and a new method for modulation and switching in integrated optics by using interference in a resonant cavity, termed coherent perfect loss (CPL), is presented. Finally, the upper limit of nanophotonic light trapping is derived for organic photovoltaics with material anisotropy included.