https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191126121209.htm

The research team was led by Professor Chang-Ki Baek and consisted of a research professor, Kihyun Kim, Myunghae Seo of Creative IT Engineering and Sol Yoon of Electronic and Electrical Engineering. The team developed hourglass-shaped silicon nanowires to enhance photoresponse while using the conventional semiconductor process.

Before their finding, the near-infrared photodiodes were made of chemical materials. For this reason, it required a separate cooling device due to the noise and high production cost when making into a large area. It was also very difficult to integrate. To overcome these difficulties of chemical materials, the team used silicon instead. Furthermore, they suggested to use hourglass-shaped silicon nanowires to increase silicon's absorptance of the near-infrared light.