Silicon nanohole photovoltaic cells

We report fabrication of silicon nanohole radial p-n junction solar cells (SCs) using thermal annealing of silver films with metal-catalyzed electroless etching (MCEE). A balanced approach between the cost and controllability of the nanostructure fabrication is used to manufacture the silicon SCs. Based on our experimental results, the size and distribution of the nanoholes can be controlled by varying the thickness of the Ag films and the temperature for thermal annealing. In this work, we performed investigations on the dependencies of the device properties on the nanohole size. Detailed structural information for the silicon nanohole SCs was provided by TEM measurement. Our experimental results indicate substantial improvements in the cell efficiency for our devices compared to reported values for random nanostructure SCs.