Nanowire based solar cells

chap 8International audienceNanowire (NW) based solar cells are an attractive approach to fabricating solar cells with efficient light trapping scheme and high collection efficiency in case of radial junctions. This chapter focusses on the designing and characterization of a‐Si/c‐Si and ZnO/CdTe NW‐based solar cells. Silicon solar cells will be considered as a reference structure and ZnO/CdTe as a prospective structure based on a direct bandgap absorber. In order to demonstrate the potentiality of c‐Si/a‐Si and of ZnO/CdTe core–shell NW arrays and to improve light absorption for photovoltaic applications, an optimization of light absorptance is usually performed by numerical optical simulation. The theoretical ideal photo‐generated current improvement exhibited by NW arrays can be predicted by numerical simulation. There are two main approaches to elaborate the NW arrays: a bottom‐up approach based on the growth of the NWs usually by Chemical Vapor deposition (CVD) and a top‐down approach based on etching methods