III-V Compound Semiconductor Nanowire Solar Cells

The promising candidates for solar cell applications are the III-V compound semiconductor nanowires, owing to their unique geometrical, optical, and electrical properties. They could also enable strain relaxation within a lattice-mismatch heterojunction, providing improved accessibility to a wider range of alloy compositions and thus tunable bandgaps, and on Si substrate. Nanowire-based tandem solar cell designs have also been explored and implemented to enhance and broaden the absorption of solar radiation. In this subchapter, we reviewed the development of III-V semiconductor nanowire-based solar cells. It starts with the introduction of nanowire synthesis methods, followed by important aspects of nanowire structure design in terms of light absorption and charge carrier separation and collection. New concepts and designs such as hybrid nanowire solar cells, tandem junction, and carrier selective contacts are also discussed. Finally, the performance metrics of these III-V nanowire solar cells are summarized, followed by the discussion on the future perspectives toward high-efficiency and low-cost solar cells.