Fabrication of slantingly-aligned silicon nanowire arrays for solar cell applications

Abstract

Large-area slantingly-aligned silicon nanowire arrays (SA-SiNW arrays) on Si(111)substrate have been fabricated by wet chemical etching with dry metal deposition methodand employed in the fabrication of solar cells for the first time. The formation of SA-SiNWarrays possibly results from the anisotropic etching of silicon by silver catalysts. Superior tothe previous cells fabricated with vertically-aligned silicon nanowire arrays (VA-SiNWarrays), the SA-SiNW array solar cells exhibit a highest power conversion efficiencyof 11.37%. The improved device performance is attributed to the integration of the excellentanti-reflection property of the arrays and the better electrical contact of the cell as a resultof the special slantingly-aligned structure. The high surface recombination velocity ofminority carriers in SiNW arrays is still the main limitation on cell performance.