III-Nitride Nanowires: Future Prospective for Photovoltaic Applications

Photovoltaic (PV) technology could be a promising candidate for clean and green source of energy. The nanowire technology provides extra mileage over planar solar cells in every step from photon absorption to current generation. Indium Gallium Nitride (InxGa1-xN) is a recently revised material with such a bandgap to absorb nearly whole solar spectrum to increase the conversion efficiency copiously. One of the major technological challenge is in-built polarization charges. This chapter highlights the basic advantageous properties of InxGa 1−xN materials, its growth technology and state-of-the-art application towards PV devices. The most important challenges that remain in realizing a high-efficiency InxGa 1−xN PV device are also discussed. III-Nitride nanowires are also explored in detail to overcome the challenges. Finally, conclusions are drawn about the potential and future aspect of InxGa 1−xN material based nanowires towards terrestrial as well as space photovoltaic applications.

Determination of Enriched Quantum Efficiency with InGaN/GaN Multiple Quantum Well Solar Cells

Background: Energy is a major concern in every aspect of our life. Solar energy is a renewable environment friendly source of energy. Therefore, solar cells are vastly studied with different technology and with different material. Objective: The main objective here is to analyze InGaN material for solar cell applications with less complicated structures of MQW solar cells on revising solar cell with the recombination structure, I-V characteristics and its efficiency. Methods: The device is simulated using SILVACO ATLAS where the well and the barrier layers are inserted in the depletion region employing material combination of InGaN / GaN which increases the solar cell performance parameter. This work focuses on the photogeneration rate, recombination in the active region as well as its current voltage relation from the simulation. Results: With the increase in the number of QW periods in the active region of the device, the photovoltaic parameters especially conversion efficiency increases significantly. Under space AM0 solar illumination, the cell efficiency increases up to 8.2 % for 20 MQWs with 20% Indium content for the InGaN/GaN structure. It enhances the external quantum efficiency (EQE) upto 36% at nearly 380nm wavelength range near the UV region. Conclusion: The modelled structure is efficiently simulated using TCAD SILVACO ATLAS, and the material Indium Gallium Nitride semiconductor shows an excellent solar cell performance with high solar radiation. It is also observed that with increase in the number of well periods the solar cell performance increases which demonstrates the feasibility of Indium Gallium Nitride solar cell with additional MQW period as power source.