SILICON NANOWIRE BASED SOLAR CELLS

Abstract

The major disadvantage of the earlier generation solar cells and even the not so old amorphous
silicon based solar cells was the very low efficiency. While the reported efficiencies of
nanocrystalline Si based thin film solar cells have been higher than the known stabilized efficiency
of amorphous silicon based thin film solar cells, they don't compare to the efficiencies reported for
waferbased silicon solar cells. This is mainly due to the recombination of minority carriers at grain
boundaries and intra-grain defects that are present in the nanocrystalline-Si absorber layer.
Therefore, a device geometry that allows the benefits of nanostructure and also lowers grain
boundary defects should greatly enhance efficiency, reduce the cost of the final solar cell and help
increase market demand.
Silicon thin films are promising optical absorber layers for inexpensive thin
film solar cells that are fabricated on foreign substrates, such as glass and stainless steel. Vertically
aligned silicon nanowire (SiNW) solar cells have already been shown theoretically to be much less
sensitive to impurities, have low reflective losses and significantly higher optical absorption
compared to planar Si Solar cells. A number of devices based on SiNW building blocks have been
suggested; however, high performance and scale-up utilizing low cost processing approaches to
produce effective devices remain a challenge. A high volume and large sample area catalytic
chemical vapor deposition system has been designed and built to synthesize
silicon nanowires using the vapor-liquid-solid growth process. The nanowires were fabricated on
gold coated p-type Si substrates. The formation of nanowires was confirmed by secondary and
transmission electron microscope analysis.
This seminar report will be an attempt to explain the advantages of silicon nanowire based solar
cells as well as the limitations in fabricating such devices. The key technologies such as nanowires
and their fabrication will be dealt with in detail. This will help in understanding how the efficiency
can be increased using this new technology. If implemented properly, it would greatly bring down
the cost of solar cells as well. As efficient solar cells can greatly promote the effective use of solar
energy available in abundance, it is worth studying.



References and links

1. Silicon nanowire development for nanowire devices
Published in:
Photovoltaic Specialists Conference (PVSC), 2012 38th IEEE
Date of Conference:
3-8 June 2012
Page(s):
001911 - 001916
ISSN :
0160-8371
Print ISBN:
978-1-4673-0064-3
INSPEC Accession Number:
13055495
Conference Location :
Austin, TX
Digital Object Identifier :
10.1109/PVSC.2012.6317967
Publisher:
IEEE
2. Articles on nanowire technologies, Wikipedia.
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell