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Research Article

Field-effect passivation on silicon nanowire solar cells

Anna Dalmau Mallorquí1, Esther Alarcón-Lladó1, Ignasi Canales Mundet1, Amirreza Kiani1, Bénédicte Demaurex2, Stefaan De Wolf2, Andreas Menzel3, Margrit Zacharias3, Anna Fontcuberta i Morral1( )
Laboratoire des Matériaux Semiconducteurs, École Polytechnique Fédérale deLausanne 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
Photovoltaics and Thin Film Electronics LaboratoryInstitute of Microengineering (IMT), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne2000Neuchâtel, Switzerland
NanotechnologyInstitute of Microsystems Engineering (IMTEK)Albert-Ludwigs-University79110Freiburg, Germany
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An erratum to this article is available online at:
https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-016-1058-1

Graphical Abstract

Abstract

Surface recombination represents a handicap for high-efficiency solar cells. This is especially important for nanowire array solar cells, where the surface-to-volume ratio is greatly enhanced. Here, the effect of different passivation materials on the effective recombination and on the device performance is experimentally analyzed. Our solar cells are large area top-down axial n-p junction silicon nanowires fabricated by means of Near-Field Phase-Shift Lithography (NF-PSL). We report an efficiency of 9.9% for the best cell, passivated with a SiO2/SiNx stack. The impact of the presence of a surface fixed charge density at the silicon/oxide interface is studied.

Keywords

field-effectpassivationnanowiresurface recombinationsolar cell

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Nano Research
Volume 8 Issue 2,
February 2015
Pages 673-681
DOI: 10.1007/s12274-014-0551-7
Cite this article:
Mallorquí AD, Alarcón-Lladó E, Mundet IC, et al. Field-effect passivation on silicon nanowire solar cells. Nano Research, 2015, 8(2): 673-681. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-014-0551-7

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Received: 25 May 2014
Revised: 07 July 2014
Accepted: 31 July 2014
Published: 11 September 2014
© Tsinghua University Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014
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