NANOSTRUCTURED SILICON SOLAR CELL

Abstract

Considering the growing evidence that CO2 emissions from fossil fuels are a major contributor to anthropogenic global climate change, a source of carbon-neutral energy will be needed at the scale of our current global energy consumption. We propose to use solar energy due to its abundance and wide availability, but there are significant challenges to producing cost-competitive solar energy solutions. One of strategy to reduce the cost of current solar cells by using materials with high aspect ratios. This principle has been shown to improve the efficiency of low-quality and therefore inexpensive materials in simulations, but there are significant challenges and drawbacks associated with using highly structured materials. Some of these include the expected increase in surface and junction recombination, as well as the expected decrease in open circuit voltage due to reduced carrier flux per unit of junction area.