Nanostructured Conductors for Flexible Electronics

Design of Contact Electrodes for Semiconductor Nanowire Solar Energy Harvesting Devices

“…The contact electrodes often need to transmit light and conduct electric current simultaneously. Metal oxides, such as indium tin oxide (ITO) and aluminum zinc oxide (AZO), are widely used to form conductive electrodes on both thin-film and nanowire photovoltaic devices in laboratories and industries. − Compared to metals, these conductive metal oxides exhibit good optical transparency and poor electrical conductivity. ,,, Although metal electrodes have good electric conductivity, they are not transparent, leading to poorer absorption and, in turn, poor conversion efficiencies. In this work, we demonstrate that such limitation of metals can be circumvented when employing 1D nanowire solar cell devices.…”