Specific distribution of the light captured by silver nanowire

The silver nanowire (AgNW) has excellent light capture ability, showing great prospects in many fields. Based on discrete dipole approximation simulations, it is found that the captured light can be subdivided into three parts: the near-field light occupies ~27.3%, mainly confined around the nanowire with a distance <20nm; the far-field part occupies ~59.6%, showing a dramatic conical distribution; and ~13.1% is ohmically absorbed. These insights are helpful to estimate the limited performance of AgNW-based device utilizing each subdivision, and locate the functional zone. Besides, we found that the light capture efficiency of AgNW can be easily controlled as it increases linearly with nanowire length.