ABSTRACT
Semiconductor nanowires (NWs) exhibit novel optical, electronic, and thermal properties as a result of their unique geometric shapes and quantum confinement effects in two directions perpendicular to wires. Semiconductor NWs are the building blocks for a broad range of macroscopic devices, including solar cells and key components of many nanodevices, based on their widely tunable band structures and broad selection of materials and compositions. In semiconductors, charged carriers experience various scatterings by other carriers, defects, impurities, surface adatoms, surface and interface states, surface and interface roughness, as well as acoustic and optical phonons. Conventional wafer-based solar cells or thin-film solar cells achieve good light trapping using anti-reflection techniques such as surface texturing and/or a quarter-wavelength dielectric thin-film coating. Technologies for controllable growth of NWs with difference doping, lengths, and morphologies have been reported.
