- Harnessing and transfer of excess energy of electrons generated by light via rapid transfer of electrons across semiconductor interfaces is key to developing more efficient solar cells. In addition, hot-electron transfer is one process involved in obtaining a region of negative electrical resistance, a non-linear feature that is important in many advanced electronic devices. Researchers now report highly tunable and fast photo-excited hot electron transfer across the cylindrical interface of a co-axial core-shell semiconductor nanowire hetero-structure. The onset of the negative resistance region is shown to be highly tunable by one of three different modes, owing to the reduced dimensionality of a nanowire. Until now, the onset of negative resistance has been fixed by the selection of materials, thus requiring a network of integrated circuit components to produce tunable components important for computing, signal processing and communications. This nano-scaled multiply-tunable optically-addressed device element opens possibilities for gaining new insight into hot electron transfer processes for solar energy conversion, and for constructing complex electronic circuits using far fewer, simpler and much smaller components with the potential for requiring much less energy to operate.
