Significant Efficiency Enhancement of Hybrid Solar Cells Using Core–Shell Nanowire Geometry for Energy Harvesting

Abstract

A novel strategy employing core–shell nanowire arrays (NWAs) consisting of Si/regioregular poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) was demonstrated to facilitate efficient light harvesting and exciton dissociation/charge collection for hybrid solar cells (HSCs). We experimentally demonstrate broadband and omnidirectional light-harvesting characteristics of core–shell NWA HSCs due to their subwavelength features, further supported by the simulation based on finite-difference time domain analysis. Meanwhile, core–shell geometry of NWA HSCs guarantees efficient charge separation since the thickness of the P3HT shells is comparable to the exciton diffusion length. Consequently, core–shell HSCs exhibit a 61% improvement of short-circuit current for a conversion efficiency (η) enhancement of 31.1% as compared to the P3HT-infiltrated Si NWA HSCs with layers forming a flat air/polymer cell interface. The improvement of crystal quality of P3HT shells due to the formation of ordering structure at Si interfaces after air mass 1.5 global (AM 1.5G) illumination was confirmed by transmission electron microscopy and Raman spectroscopy. The core–shell geometry with the interfacial improvement by AM 1.5G illumination promotes more efficient exciton dissociation and charge separation, leading to η improvement (∼140.6%) due to the considerable increase in V_oc from 257 to 346 mV, J_sc from 11.7 to 18.9 mA/cm², and FF from 32.2 to 35.2%, which is not observed in conventional P3HT-infiltrated Si NWA HSCs. The stability of the Si/P3HT core–shell NWA HSCs in air ambient was carefully examined. The core–shell geometry should be applicable to many other material systems of solar cells and thus holds high potential in third-generation solar cells.