Chapters authored
Hybrid Silicon Nanowires for Solar Cell Applications
The global human population has been growing by around 1.1% per year; such growth rate will lead the humanity to cross the 10 billion-people threshold by the end of the first half of this century. Such increase is already putting a huge strain on the nonrenewable sources of energy like fossil fuel, which will run out and come to an end in few decades. Due to these social and economic trends, renewable sources of energy, such as solar cells, have attracted a huge interest as the ultimate alternative to solve humanity’s problems. Among several emerging materials, porous silicon nanowires (PSiNWs) become an active research subject nowadays in photovoltaic application mainly due to its good light trapping effect. The etched nanowires obtained by using metal-assisted chemical etching method (MACE) can reach a low reflection in the visible range. Recently, hybrid silicon nanowires/organic solar cells have been studied for low-cost Si photovoltaic devices because the Schottky junction between the Si and organic material can be formed by solution processes at low temperature. In this chapter, we will present the synthesis of SiNWs and the last progress on the fabrication of hybrid solar cells using various organic semiconductors.
Part of the book: Emerging Solar Energy Materials