Impact of the nanorod structure on the tandem thin-film solar cell

The novel thin-film solar cell was investigated with a nanorod structure that could solve the conflict between light absorption and carrier transport in the amorphous silicon (a-Si)/amorphous silicon-germanium (a-SiGe) tandem thin-film solar cell. This structure has an n-type a-Si nanorod array on the substrate, and an a-SiOx p-layer and an a-SiGe i-layer are sequentially grown along the surface of each n-type a-Si nanorod, for the bottom cell. After the above bottom-cell process, a similar process is used to fabricate an amorphous Si p-i-n top cell on the bottom cell. Under sunlight illumination, the light is absorbed along the vertical direction of the nanorod, but as the carrier transport is along the horizontal direction, the nanorod may absorb most of the sunlight. In the meantime, the solar cell is still thin enough for the effective transport of photogenerated carriers.