Wideband Absorption Enhancement in Laterally Oriented Core-Shell c-Si/a-Si Hexagonal Nanowire Arrays

In this paper, the optical properties of laterally oriented core-shell nanowire silicon solar cells (NWSCs) are optimized. The optimum structure consists of an array with non-uniform hexagonal nanowires (NWs). Each NW is constructed from an amorphous silicon layer sandwiched between two crystalline silicon layers. In order to improve the light absorption and short circuit current density (Jsc) of NWSC, a particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is used to optimize the geometrical parameters of NWs. It is shown that the optimized structure has advantageous performance in terms of light absorption and Jsc. Finally, a multiple structure composed of two NWs with different morphologies and the optimized dimensions is proposed to utilize NWSCs better.