Improving Nanowire Photovoltaics: In principle, solar cells based on arrays of nanowires made from compound inorganic semiconductors, such as indium phosphide (InP), should decrease materials and fabrication costs compared with planar junctions. In practice, device efficiencies tend to be low because of poor light absorption and increased rates of unproductive charge recombination in the surface region. Wallentin et al. (p. 1057 , published online 17 January) now report that arrays of p-i-n InP nanowires (that switch from positive to negative doping), grown to millimeter lengths, can be optimized by varying the nanowire diameter and length of the n-doped segment. Efficiencies as high as 13.8% were achieved, which are comparable to the best planar InP photovoltaics.

We report a method using in situ etching to decouple the axial from the radial nanowire growth pathway, independent of other growth parameters. Thereby a wide range of growth parameters can be explored to improve the nanowire properties without concern of tapering or excess structural defects formed during radial growth. We demonstrate the method using etching by HCl during InP nanowire growth. The improved crystal quality of etched nanowires is indicated by strongly enhanced photoluminescence as compared to reference nanowires obtained without etching.

Solar energy harvesting for electricity production is regarded as a fully credible future energy source: plentiful and without serious environmental concerns. The breakthrough for solar energy technology implementation has, however, been hampered by two issues: the conversion efficiency of light into electricity and the solar panel production cost. The use of III-V nanowires (NWs) in photovoltaics allows to respond to both these demands. They offer efficient light absorption and significant cost reduction. These low-dimensional structures can be grown epitaxially in dense NW arrays directly on silicon wafers, which are abundant and cheaper than the germanium substrates used for triple-junction solar cells today. For planar structures, lattice matching poses a strong restriction on growth. III-V NWs offer to create highly efficient multijunction devices, since multiple materials can be combined to match the solar spectrum without the need of tightly controlled lattice matching. At the same time, less material is required for NW-based solar cells than for planar-based architecture. This approach has potential to reach more than 50% in efficiency. Here, we describe our work on NW tandem solar cells, aiming toward two junctions absorbing different parts of the solar spectrum, connected in series via a tunnel diode.