Theoretical investigation of carrier transfer by an optical contacting scheme for optoelectronic application

As a promising charge carrier transfer scheme, optical coupling could potentially improve the performance of an optoelectronic device for energy harvesting based on well developed nanotechnology. By extracting carriers optically, the functional features of the nano-structured material could be better used by minimizing the concerns about its electrical properties. In this paper, we present a rigorous electromagnetic model to analyze the optical carrier transfer problem. The flow of the energy is analyzed carefully by the photon transfer spectrum, and the photon emitters (electron-hole pairs) are assumed in a thermal equilibrium described by Bose-Einstein distribution. The result shows that an energy selective carrier transfer can be optically achieved at the device level by integrating the emitter and receiver into a nano-optical resonator, where both the photon emission and absorption are significantly amplified by a near-field coupling around the resonant frequency. General design and optimization schemes in practice are addressed by examining the influence of the photonic design and an energy dependent emissivity of the emitter, which can be used to develop the optical contacting concept further.