Excitation of local field enhancement on silicon nanowires

The interaction between light and reduced-dimensionality silicon attracts significant interest due to the possibilities of designing nanoscaled optical devices, highly cost-efficient solar cells, and ultracompact optoelectronic systems that are integrated with standard microelectronic technology. We demonstrate that Si nanowires (SiNWs) possessing metal-nanocluster coatings support a multiplicatively enhanced near-field light-matter interaction. Raman scattering from chemisorbed probing molecules provides a quantitative measure of the strength of this enhanced coupling. An enhancement factor of 2 orders of magnitude larger than that for the surface plasmon resonance alone (without the SiNWs) along with the attractive properties of SiNWs, including synthetic controllability of shape, indicates that these nanostructures may be an attractive and versatile material platform for the design of nanoscaled optical and optoelectronic circuits.