Alekseev Prokhor A, Sharov Vladislav A, Borodin Bogdan R, Dunaevskiy Mikhail S, Reznik Rodion R, Cirlin George E
Ioffe Institute, 194021 Saint-Petersburg, Russia.
Alferov University, 194021 Saint-Petersburg, Russia.
Micromachines (Basel). 2020 Jun 10;11(6):581. doi: 10.3390/mi11060581.
Research regarding ways to increase solar cell efficiency is in high demand. Mechanical deformation of a nanowire (NW) solar cell can improve its efficiency. Here, the effect of uniaxial compression on GaAs nanowire solar cells was studied via conductive atomic force microscopy (C-AFM) supported by numerical simulation. C-AFM I-V curves were measured for wurtzite p-GaAs NW grown on p-Si substrate. Numerical simulations were performed considering piezoresistance and piezoelectric effects. Solar cell efficiency reduction of 50% under a -0.5% strain was observed. The analysis demonstrated the presence of an additional fixed electrical charge at the NW/substrate interface, which was induced due to mismatch between the crystal lattices, thereby affecting the efficiency. Additionally, numerical simulations regarding the p-n GaAs NW solar cell under uniaxial compression were performed, showing that solar efficiency could be controlled by mechanical deformation and configuration of the wurtzite and zinc blende p-n segments in the NW. The relative solar efficiency was shown to be increased by 6.3% under -0.75% uniaxial compression. These findings demonstrate a way to increase efficiency of GaAs NW-based solar cells via uniaxial mechanical compression.
对于提高太阳能电池效率方法的研究需求很高。纳米线（NW）太阳能电池的机械变形可以提高其效率。在此，通过数值模拟支持的导电原子力显微镜（C-AFM）研究了单轴压缩对GaAs纳米线太阳能电池的影响。对生长在p-Si衬底上的纤锌矿p-GaAs NW测量了C-AFM的I-V曲线。考虑了压阻效应和压电效应进行了数值模拟。观察到在-0.5%应变下太阳能电池效率降低了50%。分析表明在NW/衬底界面存在额外的固定电荷，这是由于晶格失配引起的，从而影响了效率。此外，对单轴压缩下的p-n GaAs NW太阳能电池进行了数值模拟，结果表明太阳能效率可以通过NW中纤锌矿和闪锌矿p-n段的机械变形和配置来控制。在-0.75%单轴压缩下，相对太阳能效率提高了6.3%。这些发现展示了一种通过单轴机械压缩提高基于GaAs NW的太阳能电池效率的方法。
