M. Jansson, F. Ishikawa, W. M. Chen, I. A. Buyanova,
Published open access in ACS Nano.

upcycling of light at the nanoscale

In photonics and optoelectronics, controlling the energy – or wavelength – of the light is often vitally important. For example, when light from the sun impinges on a solar cell, only the light with enough energy can actually be absorbed by it, contributing to the output power, while light with too low energy is transmitted, and therefore lost.

In the research paper (linked above) by Mattias Jansson and collaborators, they demonstrate how a semiconductor nanowire (a wire which is a thousand times thinner than a human hair) can efficiently absorb low energy light and convert it to light of a higher energy, a process which is called energy upconversion. Such an upconversion process, if efficient enough, could in the future be implemented on existing solar cell technology, or even form the basis of a completely new type of high-efficiency solar cell, to harvest also the low energy part of the solar spectrum. In the paper, they also show that by properly selecting the nanowire material, they could measure an upconversion efficiency significantly larger than what has previously been measured in semiconductor upconversion devices.

More about the research

Functional electronic materials

In the Functional Electronic Materials group, we conduct scientific research on various state-of-the-art materials.

Chart of SHG/SFG wavelength och Nanowire lasing wavelength

Efficient lasers at the nanoscale

In this study, Mattias Jansson and collaborators have investigated how the localization of excitons in tiny lasers fabricated in so-called nanowire structures can affect their performance.

transparent image, place holder

Spin injection and helicity control of surface spin photocurrent in a three dimensional topological insulator

In this paper, we show how a spin current can be injected from a conventional semiconductor, such as GaAs, to a topological insulator, Bi2Te3.