Electron selective contact for high efficiency core-shell nanowire solar cell

Theoretically, for a nanowire solar cell, radial junction is expected to outperform its axial junction counterpart. However, in experimental realization axial junction solar cells have shown better performance as compared to their core-shell junction counterpart, at least in the case of III-V materials. Herein, we demonstrate nanowire solar cell utilizing a p-type InP as core and ZnO/AZO as shell in excess of 15% efficiency. We show that AZO/ZnO provides passivation to InP while ensuring electron selectivity and thus leads to the highest ever reported external quantum efficiency for InP-based nanowire solar cells.