Materials Science Program Seminar

Joan Redwing, Penn State University. Radial p-n junctions based on Si micro/nanowire arrays provide a promising pathway to reduce materials usage and purity requirements while maintaining conversion efficiencies comparable to crystalline Si (c-Si) solar cells. In a radial junction cell, light absorption is decoupled from carrier collection into orthogonal spatial directions which enables photogenerated minority carriers with short diffusion lengths to be effectively collected.