Fabrication of Silicon Nanowires by Metal-Catalyzed Electroless Etching Method and Their Application in Solar Cell

Abstract

We fabricated silicon nanowires (SiNWs) using a metalcatalyzed electroless etching method, which is known to be a low-cost and simple technique. The SiNW arrays with a length of 540 nm were used as a substrate of SiNWs/PEDOT:PSS hybrid solar cell. Furthermore, gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) were used to improve the light absorption of the device due to localized surface plasmon excitation. The results show that the short-circuit current density and the power conversion efficiency increased from 22.1 mA/cm 2 to 26.0 mA/cm 2 and 6.91% to 8.56%, respectively. The advantage of a higher interface area between the organic and inorganic semiconductors was established by using SiNW arrays and higher absorption light incorporated with AuNPs for improving the performance of the developed solar cell.

Plasmonic induced light trapping enhancement in silicon nanowires hybrid solar cell using indium tin oxide nanoparticles

“…The reason could be the long-distance charge transport from the p-n junction to the electrode [18]. This study supports the previous work, which used the etching time of 5 min for SiNWs' fabrication as the substrate of the hybrid solar cell [28].…”

“…Generally, AuNPs improve the total light absorption at the active layer by enhancing the electric field around the AuNPs when the irradiated light sufficiently passes through the active layer due to the LSPR effect. Therefore, an optimum amount of AuNPs allows the irradiated light can sufficiently transmit to the PEDOT:PSS/AuNPs layer [28]. Therefore, we have optimized the length of the SiNWs array to the hybrid solar cell performance, using the optimized concentration ratio PEDOT:PSS/AuNPs at 1:1/10.…”

“…Lu et al report that mixing gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) with the PEDOT:PSS can further enhance the performance of the hybrid solar cell [27]. As previously studied, the hybrid solar uses the mixed PEDOT:PSS and AuNPs [28]. There is no comparison between the differences in the concentration range of PEDOT:PSS and PEDOT:PSS:AuNPs of 1:1/6.…”