Optical and electrical simulations of two-junction III-V nanowires on Si solar cell

A coupled optoelectronic simulation was used to theoretically assess the performance of core-shell GaInP nanowires array (NWA)/Si thin-film two-junction solar cell. Outstanding light harvesting rooted from the strong light trapping and the formation of Fabry-Perot optical cavity in the NWA enables the cell to produce high photocurrent. From the detailed balance calculation, above 32% of efficiency could be obtained at the current matching geometries. Coupled optoelectronic simulation shows that current matching can be easily achieved even under relatively high recombination rate. A promising efficiency of 27.1% is obtained for the proposed cell with appropriate nanowires surface passivation. (C) 2013 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4788750]