Influence of the absorber layer thickness and rod length on the performance of three-dimensional nanorods thin film hydrogenated amorphous silicon solar cells

摘要

Performance of substrate-configured hydrogenated amorphous silicon solar cells based on ZnO nanorod arrays prepared by hydrothermal method has been investigated. The light harvest ability of three-dimensional nanorods solar cells is a compromise between the absorber layer thickness and the nanorods geometry. By optimizing the intrinsic a-Si∶H absorber layer thickness from 75 to 250 nm and varying the length of the nanorods from 600 to 1800 nm, the highest energy conversion efficiency of 6.07% is obtained for the nanorods solar cell having thin absorber layer thickness of 200 nm with the rod length of 600 nm. This represents up to 28% enhanced efficiency compared to the conventional flat reference cell with similar absorber layer thickness.