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.
Highlights
Single nanowire (NW) solar cells have increasingly attracted attention in recent years serving as powering nanoscale devices [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]
The rectangular NWs (RNWs) is illuminated normally by sunlight from the top, the wavelength range of the incident light is from 300 to 1100 nm with a step size of 5 nm considering solar radiation and the bandgap of silicon, the perfectly matched layers (PML) boundary conditions are considered to avoid any non-physical reflection with the boundaries, the total-field scattered-field (TFSF) method was applied to ensure that a single NW interacts with an infinite plane wave
To understand the light absorption mechanism responsible for the improved photocurrent of the RNW, we investigate the absorption efficiency (Qabs), ultimate photocurrent (Jph), normalized electric field (Er), absorption mode profile (Pabs) and photogeneration rate (G), respectively
Summary
Single nanowire (NW) solar cells have increasingly attracted attention in recent years serving as powering nanoscale devices [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. Light management in single NW solar cells is very important for ensuring both high absorption and little material [9,10,11,12,13,14]. Light management is an effective way to improve light absorption and enhance the photoelectric conversion efficiency of single NW solar cell. Some new strategies have been implemented to improve the lightharvesting capability of the NWs based on the symmetry breaking. Compared with the square NWs (SNWs), rectangular NWs (RNWs) provide more possibility to realize effective light management. To the best of our knowledge, very few investigations based on the symmetry doi:10.20944/preprints202011.0704.v1 breaking from the SNWs to RNWs have been explored to improve light-harvesting in single NWs so far
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
