Light Trapping Induced High Short-Circuit Current Density in III-Nitride Nanorods/Si (111) Heterojunction Solar Cells

Ching-Wen Chang; Paritosh V Wadekar; Hui-Chun Huang; Quark Yung-Sung Chen; Yuh-Renn Wu; Ray T Chen; Li-Wei Tu

doi:10.1186/s11671-020-03392-z

Light Trapping Induced High Short-Circuit Current Density in III-Nitride Nanorods/Si (111) Heterojunction Solar Cells

Nanoscale Res Lett. 2020 Aug 20;15(1):167. doi: 10.1186/s11671-020-03392-z.

Authors

Ching-Wen Chang^{1

2

3}, Paritosh V Wadekar¹, Hui-Chun Huang⁴, Quark Yung-Sung Chen^{1

5}, Yuh-Renn Wu⁶, Ray T Chen², Li-Wei Tu^{7

8}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physics and Center of Crystal Research, National Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung, 80424, Taiwan, Republic of China.
² Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, 78758, USA.
³ Research Center for Applied Sciences, Academia Sinica, Taipei, 11529, Taiwan, Republic of China.
⁴ Department of Materials and Opto-electronic Science, National Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung, 80424, Taiwan, Republic of China.
⁵ Department of Physics and Texas Center for Superconductivity, University of Houston, Houston, TX, 77004, USA.
⁶ Institute of Photonics and Optoelectronics and Department of Electrical Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei, 10617, Taiwan, Republic of China.
⁷ Department of Physics and Center of Crystal Research, National Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung, 80424, Taiwan, Republic of China. lwtu@mail.nsysu.edu.tw.
⁸ Department of Medical Laboratory Science and Biotechnology, Kaohsiung Medical University, Kaohsiung, 80708, Taiwan, Republic of China. lwtu@mail.nsysu.edu.tw.

Abstract

An effective-area photovoltaic efficiency of 1.27% in power conversion, excluding the grid metal contact area and under 1 sun, AM 1.5G conditions, has been obtained for the p-GaN/i-InGaN/n-GaN diode arrays epitaxially grown on (111)-Si. The short-circuit current density is 14.96 mA/cm² and the open-circuit voltage is 0.28 V. Enhanced light trapping acquired via multiple reflections within the strain and defect free III-nitride nanorod array structures and the short-wavelength responses boosted by the wide bandgap III-nitride constituents are believed to contribute to the observed enhancements in device performance.

Keywords: III-nitride; Light trapping; Nanorod; Photovoltaic device; Plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy; Solar cell.

Abstract

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