Crystalline-Si (c-Si) solar cell with black Si (b-Si) layer at the rear was studied in order to develop c-Si solar cell with sub-band gap photovoltaic response. The b-Si was made by chemical etching. The c-Si solar cell with b-Si at the rear was found to perform far better than that of similar structure but with no b-Si at the rear, with the efficiency being increased relatively by 27.7%. This ...

Reducing the thickness of crystalline Si wafers processed to solar cells returns two significant benefits. Firstly, processing cost is reduced by saving costand energy-intensive Si material. Secondly, the required diffusion length of minority carriers is smaller, thus, wafers with a smaller carrier lifetime (e.g. due to higher base doping) can be utilized. In this work, the industrially feasibl...

Inorganic/organic hybrid radial heterojunction solar cells that combine vertically-aligned n-type silicon nanowires (SiNWs) with poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrene-sulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) have great potential for replacing commercial Si solar cells. The chief advantage of such solar cells is that they exhibit higher absorbance for a given thickness than commercial Si solar cells, due ...

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We demonstrate the implementation of a hybrid solar cell that comprises a surface nanostructured n-type Si and poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrenesulfonate). The Si surface before deposition of the organic layer was nanostructured by using CsCl self-assembled nanoparticles as a hard mask and dry etching to form radial junction architectures and enhance light diffusion and absorption. ...

We demonstrate that subwavelength scatterers can couple sunlight into guided modes in thin film Si and GaAs plasmonic solar cells whose back interface is coated with a corrugated metal film. Using numerical simulations, we find that incoupling of sunlight is remarkably insensitive to incident angle, and that the spectral features of the coupling efficiency originate from several different reson...

Thin-film crystalline silicon (c-Si) solar cells with light-trapping structures can enhance light absorption within the semiconductor absorber layer and reduce material usage. Here we demonstrate that an inverted nanopyramid light-trapping scheme for c-Si thin films, fabricated at wafer scale via a low-cost wet etching process, significantly enhances absorption within the c-Si layer. A broadban...

Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) with outstanding electronic, optical, mechanical and thermal properties are expected to be the most promising materials for next-generation energy as well as optical and electronic devices. However, the structure-controlled assembling of SWNTs to macroscale for various devices is still challenging. This study focused on the SWNT assemblies for improving th...

Combining carbon nanotubes (CNTs), graphene or conducting polymers with conventional silicon wafers leads to promising solar cell architectures with rapidly improved power conversion efficiency until recently. Here, we report CNT-Si junction solar cells with efficiencies reaching 15% by coating a TiO₂ antireflection layer and doping CNTs with oxidative chemicals, under air mass (AM 1.5) illumin...