Light trapping enhancement in ordered and disordered silicon nanowire based solar cells

Abstract

In this work we introduce the main principles behind efficient light trapping in silicon nanowire structures. The ultimate performance of vertical periodic crystalline silicon nanowire arrays has been determined and optimized values have been presented as a function of the nanowire length. The further improvement of the performance has been demonstrated using dual-diameter periodic silicon nanowire arrays where the already optimized nanowire structure has been used as the starting point. The improved efficiency of this densely packed structure has been compared with the reference flat films in order to evaluate theoretical improvement of the light trapping efficiency. In the last part of our work we present the efficient light trapping inside amorphous silicon nanowire based radial junction solar cells fabricated using plasma enhanced vapor-liquid-solid process.

Compound semiconductor nanowires based organicinorganic hybrid solar cell

“…When FR is 0.05, both NW arrays have few light coupling and similar values of Jsc are found in the two arrangements. This coincides with the conclusions drawn by other researchers[58,155,156].…”

Comparative Study of Silicon Nanowires Grown From Ga, In, Sn, and Bi for Energy Harvesting

“…Similarly, the density of silicon nanowires is higher for the lower melting point catalyst such as Ga and lower for the higher melting point catalysts such as Bi used in this work. Periodic arrangement of nanowires in not important for light trapping and can be addressed by controlling the distance between the nanowires, diameter and the length of nanowires [23]. Hence, this work focused on trying to obtain nanowires of approximately 1um length, 100nm diameter and 200nm as the distance between nanowires for light trapping as observed in Fig.…”

In-situ catalyst mediated growth and self-doped silicon nanowires for use in nanowire solar cells

“…Better performance of solar cells fabricated from SiNWs grown from Ga compared to Bi is also attributed to the higher Si volume fraction obtained from dense growth that contributes to a higher number of photo-generated carriers. Light absorption does not heavily depend on the arrangement (periodical, hexagonal, or square) of nanowire arrays, but it increases logarithmically with increasing length in the nanowires [30]. SiNWs grown from Ga and Bi are approximately 3μm and 1 μm long, respectively, which is another key parameter that has shown higher efficiency for solar cells with SiNWs grown from Ga.…”