Stability Investigation of Silicon Nanowire Solar Cells

This thesis defines new developments in the investigation of the stability of the proposed active layer for the photovoltaic solar cell. It begins by providing a brief overview of the research and the recent development in solar cells. Then it describes the fabrication and characterisation techniques used in developing solar cells' nanowire active layer used here. The metal insulator semiconductor structure in which the semiconductor is made of Silicon nanostructures is used in this work to study and investigate the Silicon nanostructure's stability. The back contact and oxidation layer optimisation process have similarly been provided for investigation purposes. The RF plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition has been used at different temperatures to deposit silicon nanostructures which may be used for the solar cell active region. The metal-insulator-semiconductor active region efficiency has been evaluated through optical and electrical characteristics, such as optical absorption, dark current, current-voltage or capacitance-voltage equipment, to investigate the stability as a function of the deposition temperatures and to understand the role of such nanostructures in achieving high-efficiency in the prospective photovoltaic cells. We found that supporting replacing a-SiH-based active layer technology with SiNWs technology can help in improving the active layer stability. Another contribution to this work is the introduction of a new qualitative tool. This statistical analysis tool was very helpful from a design standpoint and can help designers to select and decide on the fabrication conditions and limitations as soon as they have datasets available.