Light trapping enhancement in ordered and disordered silicon nanowire based solar cells

Abstract

In this work we introduce the main principles behind efficient light trapping in silicon nanowire structures. The ultimate performance of vertical periodic crystalline silicon nanowire arrays has been determined and optimized values have been presented as a function of the nanowire length. The further improvement of the performance has been demonstrated using dual-diameter periodic silicon nanowire arrays where the already optimized nanowire structure has been used as the starting point. The improved efficiency of this densely packed structure has been compared with the reference flat films in order to evaluate theoretical improvement of the light trapping efficiency. In the last part of our work we present the efficient light trapping inside amorphous silicon nanowire based radial junction solar cells fabricated using plasma enhanced vapor-liquid-solid process.