Enhanced Light-Harvesting in Single Rectangular Silicon Nanowires

Abstract

Light-harvesting of single nanowires is very crucial to enhance conversion efficency of solar cells. Here, we systematically examined light-harvesting of single rectangular nanowires and found that light-harvesting of rectangular nanowires is increased contrasted with that of square nanowires, which is because decreasing the horizontal side can strengthen the leaky mode resonances and increasing the vertical side can increase the length of the light path. Numerical results showed that the photocurrent of single rectangular silicon nanowires is dramatically enhanced by 82.9% or 276.5% in comparison with that of square nanowires with the same vertical side (1000 nm) or horizontal side (100 nm), respectively. This work indicates that light-harvesting of single nanowires can be improved by decreasing the symmetry from the square to rectangular nanowires.