Characteristics of Planar and Conformal Contact GaAs Core–Shell Nanowire Array Solar Cells

As the transparent contact in radial p-n junction core-shell nanowire array solar cells can be either planar or conformal, the characteristics of these two types of device structure would be very different since conformal contact gives rise to severe band bending. Although radial p-n junction GaAs core-shell nanowire array solar cell with conformal transparent contact has been briefly inferred to have an inferior performance compared to the same nanowire array solar cell with planar transparent contact, the characteristics of these two types of radial p-n junction core-shell nanowire array solar cells are not known. Furthermore, it is unknown how the performance of these two types of solar cell compares with each other when the nanowire design parameters are optimized according to device physics of these two types of solar cell. In this paper, it is shown that radial p-n junction GaAs core-shell nanowire array solar cells with planar transparent contact are prone to carrier avalanche breakdown, and hence have a limited range of doping density. On the other hand, carrier diffusion in radial p-n junction GaAs core-shell nanowire array solar cells with conformal transparent contact is poor and hence requires a high doping to the core in order to increase the output voltage. All in all, this paper reveals that either type of transparent contact structure yields essentially the same energy conversion efficiency as long as the radial p-n junction GaAs core-shell nanowires are designed to suit the device physics of the type of transparent contact.