Preprint Article Version 1 Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed

Light Management in Single Rectangular Silicon Nanowires for Photovoltaic Applications

Version 1 : Received: 27 November 2020 / Approved: 27 November 2020 / Online: 27 November 2020 (20:22:58 CET)
Version 2 : Received: 8 February 2021 / Approved: 8 February 2021 / Online: 8 February 2021 (11:38:12 CET)

A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.

Liu, W.; Lio, X.; Wang, Y.; Wen, B. Enhanced Light-Harvesting in Single Rectangular Silicon Nanowires. Journal of Nanoelectronics and Optoelectronics 2021, 16, 428–433, doi:10.1166/jno.2021.2962. Liu, W.; Lio, X.; Wang, Y.; Wen, B. Enhanced Light-Harvesting in Single Rectangular Silicon Nanowires. Journal of Nanoelectronics and Optoelectronics 2021, 16, 428–433, doi:10.1166/jno.2021.2962.

Abstract

Light management in single nanowires (NWs) is of great importance for photovoltaic applications. However, square NWs (SNWs) can limit their light-trapping ability due to high geometrical symmetry. In this work, we present a detailed study of light management in single silicon NWs with a rectangular cross-section (RNWs). We demonstrate that the RNWs exhibit significantly enhanced light-harvesting compared with the SNWs, which can be attributed to the symmetry-broken structure that can orthogonalize the direction of light illumination and the leaky mode resonances (LMRs). That is, the rectangular cross-section can simultaneously increase the light path length by increasing the vertical side and reshape the LMR modes by decreasing the horizontal side. We found that the light absorption can be engineered via tuning the horizontal and vertical sides, the photocurrent is significantly enhanced by 276.5% or 82.9% in comparison with that of the SNWs with the same side length as the horizontal side of 100 nm or the vertical side of 1000 nm, respectively. This work advances our understanding of how to improve light-harvesting based on the symmetry breaking from the SNWs to RNWs and provides an effective way for designing high-efficiency single NW photovoltaic devices.

Keywords

silicon; single nanowires; rectangular cross-section; absorption; photocurrent

Subject

Chemistry and Materials Science, Nanotechnology

Comments (0)

We encourage comments and feedback from a broad range of readers. See criteria for comments and our Diversity statement.

Leave a public comment
Send a private comment to the author(s)
* All users must log in before leaving a comment
Views 0
Downloads 0
Comments 0
Metrics 0


×
Alerts
Notify me about updates to this article or when a peer-reviewed version is published.
We use cookies on our website to ensure you get the best experience.
Read more about our cookies here.