Optical simulation of ZnO/CdTe and c-Si/a-Si vertical nanowires solar cells

In this paper the optical optimization of vertical ZnO/CdTe and crystalline silicon/amorphous silicon (c-Si/a-Si) core-shell heterojunction nanowires array solar cells is presented. Optical simulations have been performed by means of a Rigorous Coupled-Wave Analysis (RCWA) numerical simulator which allows the modeling of nanostructured optoelectronic devices with a reasonable trade-off between accuracy and computational resources requirement. The optical optimization addresses the design of the array geometry in order to maximize the light absorption within the semiconductor. The paper describes the adopted simulation approach for the optical optimization of the investigated devices and analyzes the impact of the employed material and of the geometry on optical performance.