Silicon Nanowire Heterojunction Solar Cells with an Al₂O₃ Passivation Film Fabricated by Atomic Layer Deposition

Silicon nanowires (SiNWs) show a great potential for energy applications because of the optical confinement effect, which enables the fabrication of highly efficient and thin crystalline silicon (c-Si) solar cells. Since a 10-μm-long SiNW array can absorb sufficient solar light less than 1200 nm, the 10-μm-long SiNW was fabricated on Si wafer to eliminate the influence of the Si wafer. On the other hand, Surface passivation of the SiNWs is a crucial problem that needs to be solved to reduce surface recombination and enable the application of SiNWs to c-Si solar cells. In this study, aluminum oxide (Al₂O₃) was fabricated by atomic layer deposition for the passivation of dangling bonds. However, owing to a complete covering of the SiNWs with Al₂O₃, the carriers could not move to the external circuit. Therefore, chemical-mechanical polishing was performed to uniformly remove the oxide from the top of the SiNWs. A heterojunction solar cell with an efficiency of 1.6% was successfully fabricated using amorphous silicon (a-Si). The internal quantum efficiencies (IQE) of the SiNW and c-Si solar cells were discussed. In the wavelength region below 340 nm, the IQE of the SiNW solar cell is higher than that of the c-Si device, which results in an increase of the absorption of the SiNW cells, suggesting that SiNWs are promising for crystalline-silicon thinning.