They are under dark (filled symbols) or white light (empty symbols) conditions, in devices containing (a) 12- or (b) 2-nm a-Ge QWs. The used metal-insulator-semiconductor configuration is drawn in the figure. In order to quantitatively investigate the spectral response of the devices, we illuminated

them with different wavelengths and measured Protein Tyrosine Kinase inhibitor the external quantum efficiency ( where P is the power of incident photons per unit area), which gives the number of collected carriers per incident photon at a given wavelength. In Figure 5a, the EQE spectra are reported for both the devices biased at −3 V. The device with 2-nm a-Ge shows a fairly low and flat PX-478 manufacturer photoresponse in all the investigated spectral range. Such a response was expected

after the very low net photocurrent reported in Figure 4b. Actually, this behavior can be mainly attributed to the contribution of the carrier generation and extraction within the depleted region layer in the Si substrate, without a significant role of the Ge QW since (1) light absorption by the GSK3326595 clinical trial 2-nm a-Ge QW occurs only for photons with energy larger than 1.8 eV (λ ≤ 700 nm) and (2) even for λ ≤ 700 nm, the fraction of absorbed light is only a few percent of the total incident light (Figure 2a). Thus, a really small contribution of the 2-nm a-Ge QW is expected on the overall response of the photodetector, allowing for the consideration of the 2-nm a-Ge QW device as a reference for the substrate behavior. On the contrary, the device with 12-nm a-Ge QWs shows a much larger EQE, clearly indicating the paramount role of carrier photogeneration within a-Ge films. Even if the maximum EQE is only 14%, one should consider that the photoresponse in this device is mainly attributable to the photocarrier generation within the 12-nm Ge layer and their following extraction, since the Si substrate has only a minor contribution in this case. In particular, the fraction of absorbed light in the 12-nm-thick a-Ge QW is much lower than unity

in the entire spectral range investigated, since we have already reported the absorption spectrum of this same sample (Figure 2a). Therefore, we can extract the internal quantum efficiency (IQE), which gives the number of collected carriers per absorbed photon at a given wavelength by the Ge layer, Oxymatrine . As reported in Figure 5b, the IQE shows values as high as 70% in the near-infrared region, close to the E G (approximately 0.9 eV) that we measured for this sample through an independent method in Figure 2b. This correlation further supports the main role of the a-Ge QW as active absorbing layer in the photodetector device. The IQE spectrum decreases for higher photon energy as the collection of the hotter carriers is less probable due to recombination issues. Figure 5 EQE and IQE spectra. (a) EQE spectra taken at −3-V bias for the 2- or 12-nm a-Ge QW devices. (b) IQE spectrum for the 12-nm a-Ge QW photodetector biased at −3 V.