Carrier selective metal-oxides for self-doped silicon nanowire solar cells

Date

2019-06-29

Advisors

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Elsevier

Type

Article

Peer reviewed

Yes

Abstract

Selection of a material that serves multiple purposes is always beneficial for any electronic device including solar cells. This study investigates nickel oxide (NiO) as a multipurpose material to overcome the potential issues observed in traditional solar cells. A proof-of concept device is fabricated to understand the efficient hole transport from NiO while blocking electrons as determined by I-V measurements showing suppression of dark current and enhancement in the power conversion from the solar cell. Enhanced surface defects in the silicon nanowires (SiNWs) leading to the poor carrier collection is possible to be improved by the selection of wide bandgap metal-oxides that show high band offset for one carrier (electron/hole) while negligible band offset for another carrier (hole/electron) is discussed. Furthermore, Fermi level de-pinning for NiO sandwiched between different metal electrodes and SiNWs, signifying that the selection of appropriate metal electrodes is another key factor in improving the efficiency of solar cells; which is experimentally studied in this work. As fabricated solar cells in this work do not use high temperature diffused P[sbnd]N junction to separate the charge carriers neither toxic gases for doping SiNWs.

Description

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.

Keywords

Citation

Manjunathan, K.N. and Paul, S. (2019) Carrier selective metal-oxides for self-doped silicon nanowire solar cells. Applied Surface Science, 492, pp. 856-861

Rights

Research Institute