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Silicon nanowire-based solar cells received increasing attention due to their enhanced light harvesting properties and the potential to use lowcost materials to produce solar cells comparable with those on costly monocrystalline counterparts. It is essential to improve the performance of nanowire solar cells by suppressing surface recombination. A multiple core (crystalline silicon nanowires)−shell silicon nanowire-based heterojunction solar cell has been fabricated to deal with this problem. To this end, an ultrathin passivating Al 2 O 3 tunnel layer was deposited on the highly doped ptype a-Si:H emitter prior to a transparent conducting oxide by atomic layer deposition (ALD). Both open circuit voltage and current density increase significantly due to the insertion of the ultrathin Al 2 O 3 layer. An efficiency of 10.0% has been reached by using this multiple core−shell structure.

Axial heterojunctions between pure silicon and pure germanium in nanowires have been realized combining pulsed laser deposition, chemical vapor deposition and electron beam evaporation in a vapor-liquid-solid nanowire growth experiment using gold nanoparticles as catalyst for the 1D wire growth. Energy dispersive x-ray mappings and line scans show a compositional transition from pure silicon to pure germanium and vice versa with exponential and thus comparably sharp transition slopes. Based on these results not only Si-Ge heterojunctions seem to be possible using the vapor-liquid-solid growth process but also heterojunctions in optoelectronic III-V compounds such as InGaAs/GaAs or group III nitride compounds such as InGaN/GaN as well as axial p-n junctions in Si nanowires.

Doped silicon nanowires (NWs) were epitaxially grown on silicon substrates by pulsed laser deposition following a vapour-liquid-solid process, in which dopants together with silicon atoms were introduced into the gas phase by laser ablation of lightly and highly doped silicon target material. p-n or p(++)-p junctions located at the NW-silicon substrate interfaces were thus realized. To detect these junctions and visualize them the electron beam induced current technique and two-point probe current-voltage measurements were used, based on nanoprobing individual silicon NWs in a scanning electron microscope. Successful silicon NW doping by pulsed laser deposition of doped target material could experimentally be demonstrated. This doping strategy compared to the commonly used doping from the gas phase during chemical vapour deposition is evaluated essentially with a view to potentially overcoming the limitations of chemical vapour deposition doping, which shows doping inhomogeneities between the top and bottom of the NW as well as between the core and shell of NWs and structural lattice defects, especially when high doping levels are envisaged. The pulsed laser deposition doping technique yields homogeneously doped NWs and the doping level can be controlled by the choice of the target material. As a further benefit, this doping procedure does not require the use of poisonous gases and may be applied to grow not only silicon NWs but also other kinds of doped semiconductor NWs, e.g. group III nitrides or arsenides.