Optical and electrical characteristics of highly efficient flower-shaped silicon nanowires solar cell

This paper introduces and numerically analyzes flower-shaped nanowires (FS-NWs) with improved light harvesting. The optical and electrical characteristics are studied using the finite-difference time-domain and finite-element methods. In this study, the ultimate efficiency (η), optical generation (G), short circuit current density (JSC), open-circuit voltage (Voc), and electrical power conversion efficiency (PCE) are numerically computed. The geometrical parameters of the suggested FS-NWs are tuned to improve the optical absorption and hence the ultimate efficiency. The FS-NWs show higher absorption than the conventional cylindrical NWs (CC-NWs) due to the multiple resonance peaks and higher cross-section scattering in the high photon energy band. The reported FS-NWs provide an optical efficiency (η) of 35.6%, with an improvement of 11.4% over CC-NWs. This is due to the capability of the FS-NWs to trap more photons and generate more supported modes through the active absorbing layer. The reported design with axial doping junction offers an open-circuit voltage (Voc) of 0.68 V, short circuit current density (JSC) of 18.68 mA/cm2, and PCE of 9.6%, which are better than that of CC-NWs with Voc of 0.70 V, JSC of 17.88 mA/cm2, and PCE of 8.68%.