Rationally Designed , Three - Dimensional Carbon Nanotube Back - Contacts for Effi cient Solar Devices

In such a device concept, the effi ciency of thin fi lm solar devices can be enhanced by orthogonalizing the light absorption and carrier collection processes, especially for the material systems that exhibit low minority carrier lifetimes. [ 7 ] In addition, surface refl ectance is reduced and the absorption is enhanced, thus improving the overall conversion effi ciency. One route for fabricating 3-D solar devices involves the use of textured substrates and/or back-contacts followed by the conformal deposition of thin fi lms of the absorber material. [ 8 ] In this regard, exploring scalable and tunable nanotexturing processes with high-aspect ratio features is required. Here, we demonstrate the fabrication of textured carbon nanofi ber (CNF) arrays for the back-contact of solar devices with improved photon capture properties. Using a scalable,