Silicon nanowire solar cells

Tsakalakos, Loucas; Balch, Joleyn; Fronheiser, Jody; Korevaar, B.A.; Sulima, O.V.; Rand, James A.

doi:10.1063/1.2821113

Cited by 949 publications

(692 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…As a consequence, electron coupling to 'breathing modes' emerges that can not be described by conventional treatments of e-ph coupling. The consequences for physical properties such as scattering lengths and mobilities is significant: the mobilities for [110] grown wires is 6 times larger than for [100] wires, an effect that can not be predicted without the form we find for Si nanowire deformation potentials.Silicon nanowires, beyond having been successfully demonstrated as conventional semiconductor devices, 1-4 are beginning to be seen as the important blocks for novel energy harvesting applications, such as solar cells 5,6 and efficient thermoelectric devices. 7,8 All these applications rely on a high electronic conductivity of electrons, while in the latter a low phonon conductivity is also essential.…”

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confidence: 99%

Deformation Potentials and Electron−Phonon Coupling in Silicon Nanowires

2010

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The role of reduced dimensionality and of the surface on electron-phonon (e-ph) coupling in silicon nanowires is determined from first principles. Surface termination and chemistry is found to have a relatively small influence, whereas reduced dimensionality fundamentally alters the behavior of deformation potentials. As a consequence, electron coupling to 'breathing modes' emerges that can not be described by conventional treatments of e-ph coupling. The consequences for physical properties such as scattering lengths and mobilities is significant: the mobilities for [110] grown wires is 6 times larger than for [100] wires, an effect that can not be predicted without the form we find for Si nanowire deformation potentials.Silicon nanowires, beyond having been successfully demonstrated as conventional semiconductor devices, 1-4 are beginning to be seen as the important blocks for novel energy harvesting applications, such as solar cells 5,6 and efficient thermoelectric devices. 7,8 All these applications rely on a high electronic conductivity of electrons, while in the latter a low phonon conductivity is also essential. 9,10 At the heart of understanding the interrelation between these properties is the interaction of phonons and electrons: scattering of electrons with phonons reduces the conductivity of these devices, increasing heating and reducing their efficiency, while the scattering

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confidence: 99%

Deformation Potentials and Electron−Phonon Coupling in Silicon Nanowires

2010

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“…The benefits of the approach are considered to be a) increased light trapping from low volumes of material compared to thin films [10] and b) the separation of the processes of optical absorption and of carrier collection i.e. with absorption taking place as light travels down the length of a NW and carrier collection taking place over its width [11,12], this being postulated to minimise recombination loss provided the NW radius is smaller than the average carrier diffusion length. For the case of CdTe NW PV, modelling has indicated that 20% efficiency should be achievable [13], whereas 6% has been reached in practice, this being demonstrated using CdS nanopillars coated with CdTe [14].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Microstructure and point defects in CdTe nanowires for photovoltaic applications

Williams¹,

Halliday²,

Mendis³

et al. 2013

Nanotechnology

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Publisher's copyright statement:This is an author-created, un-copyedited version of an article accepted for publication in Nanotechnology. IOP Publishing Ltd is not responsible for any errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript or any version derived from it. The Version of Record is available online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/0957-4484/24/13/135703Additional information: Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-pro t purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. AbstractDefects in Au-catalysed CdTe nanowires VLS-grown on polycrystalline underlayers have been critically evaluated. Their low-temperature photoluminescence spectra were dominated by excitonic emission with rarely observed above-gap emission also being recorded. While acceptor bound exciton lines due to monovalent metallic impurities (Ag, Cu or Na) were seen, only deeper, donor acceptor pair emission could be attributed to the Au contamination that is expected from the catalyst. Annealing under nitrogen acted to enhance the single crystal-like PL emission, whilst oxidising and reducing anneals of the type that are used in solar cell device processing caused it to degrade. The incidence of stacking faults, polytypes and twins was related only to the growth axes of the wires (<111> 50%, <112> 30% and <110> 20%), and was not influenced by annealing. The potential electrical activity of the point and extended defects, and the suitability of these nanowire materials (including processing steps) for solar cell applications, is discussed. Overall they have quality that is superior to that of thin polycrystalline films, although questions remain about recombination due to Au.

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“…1,2 It has been shown that they can successfully be integrated into devices such as sensors, NW transistors and solar cells of which some are already beyond the prototype stage. [3][4][5][6][7][8][9] Once a silicon p-n diode is reduced to a single NW, its opto-electronic characteristics can signicantly change due to an enhanced contribution of the electrical surface response, a strong current connement within the structure and resonant interaction with light. [10][11][12][13] These phenomena require in-depth understanding in order to successfully replace parts of today's technologies by advantageous NW building blocks.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Probing photo-carrier collection efficiencies of individual silicon nanowire diodes on a wafer substrate

et al. 2014

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Vertically aligned silicon nanowire (SiNW) diodes are promising candidates for the integration into various opto-electronic device concepts for e.g. sensing or solar energy conversion. Individual SiNW p-n diodes have intensively been studied, but to date an assessment of their device performance once integrated on a silicon substrate has not been made. We show that using a scanning electron microscope (SEM) equipped with a nano-manipulator and an optical fiber feed-through for tunable (wavelength, power using a tunable laser source) sample illumination, the dark and illuminated current-voltage (I-V) curve of individual SiNW diodes on the substrate wafer can be measured. Surprisingly, the I-V-curve of the serially coupled system composed of SiNW/wafers is accurately described by an equivalent circuit model of a single diode and diode parameters like series and shunting resistivity, diode ideality factor and photocurrent can be retrieved from a fit. We show that the photo-carrier collection efficiency (PCE) of the integrated diode illuminated with variable wavelength and intensity light directly gives insight into the quality of the device design at the nanoscale. We find that the PCE decreases for high light intensities and photocurrent densities, due to the fact that considerable amounts of photo-excited carriers generated within the substrate lead to a decrease in shunting resistivity of the SiNW diode and deteriorate its rectification. The PCE decreases systematically for smaller wavelengths of visible light, showing the possibility of monitoring the effectiveness of the SiNW device surface passivation using the shown measurement technique. The integrated device was pre-characterized using secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS), TCAD simulations and electron beam induced current (EBIC) measurements to validate the properties of the characterized material at the single SiNW diode level.

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Silicon nanowire solar cells

Cited by 949 publications

References 19 publications

Deformation Potentials and Electron−Phonon Coupling in Silicon Nanowires

Deformation Potentials and Electron−Phonon Coupling in Silicon Nanowires

Microstructure and point defects in CdTe nanowires for photovoltaic applications

Probing photo-carrier collection efficiencies of individual silicon nanowire diodes on a wafer substrate

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