Single-nanowire solar cells beyond the Shockley–Queisser limit
By P. Krogstrup, H. I. Jorgensen, M. Heiss, O. Demichel, J. Holm, M. Aagesen, J. Nygård, A. Fontcuberta i Morral. Nature Photonics, 2013
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Light management is of great importance in photovoltaic cells, as it determines the fraction of incident light entering the device. An optimal p–n junction combined with optimal light absorption can lead to a solar cell efficiency above the Shockley–Queisser limit. Here, we show how this is possible by studying photocurrent generation for a single core–shell p–i–n junction GaAs nanowire solar cell grown on a silicon substrate. At 1 sun illumination, a short-circuit current of 180 mA cm–2 is obtained, which is more than one order of magnitude higher than that predicted from the Lambert–Beer law. The enhanced light absorption is shown to be due to a light-concentrating property of the standing nanowire, as shown by photocurrent maps of the device. The results imply new limits for the maximum efficiency obtainable with III–V based nanowire solar cells under 1 sun illumination. The light concentrating properties of single p-i-n GaAs nanowires are shown to result in far greater photocurrent densities than expected under one sun illumination. The results suggest that such cells could in principle operate with power conversion efficiencies beyond the Shockley–Queisser limit.
Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Biomedical Engineering, Electrical and Electronic Engineering
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/fefc8fad2a0ef5b05a805dd5a8aa4a1151d29dc5
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Citations in the corpus
- III–V semiconductor nanowires for optoelectronic device applications (2011, background): “In this context, semiconductor nanowires have emerged as promising candidates for optoelectronic device applications [1-8].”