Optical Properties of Nanoporous Germanium Thin Films

In the present article we report enhanced light absorption, tunable size-dependent blue shift, and efficient electron-hole pairs generation in Ge nanoporous films (np-Ge) grown on Si. The Ge films are grown by sputtering and molecular beam epitaxy; subsequently, the nanoporous structure is obtained by Ge+ self-implantation. We show, by surface photovoltage spectroscopy measurements, blue shift of the optical energy gap and strong signal enhancement effects in the np-Ge films. The blue shift is related to quantum confinement effects at the wall separating the pore in the structure, the signal enhancement to multiple light-scattering events, which result in enhanced absorption. All these characteristics are highly stable with time. These findings demonstrate that nanoporous Ge films can be very promising for photovoltaic applications.