Epitaxial growth, characterization and solar cell application of indium nitride nanowires on silicon

The present global energy crisis can be attributed to excessive greenhouse gas emissions arising from escalating fossil fuel consumption in addition to limited fossil fuel supplies. The great demand for clean energy and renewable power can potentially be resolved by utilizing the process of solar energy conversion. However, the extensive usage of solar energy is not happening due to the high cost and insufficient efficiencies in existing solar cell devices. Nanostructured materials, particularly one-dimensional (1-D) nanowires (NWs), have provided new opportunities to enhance the efficiency by enabling improved photon absorption, electron transport as well as collection, at a reduced processing cost. Particularly, InN has become an attractive material for constructing NWs due to its high electron mobility, high chemical stability, low toxicity, and a narrow bandgap of ∼0.7 eV that can be tuned to ∼3.4 eV by incorporating Ga, which essentially encompasses the whole solar spectrum. In this thesis, epitaxial growth and characterization of superior quality InN NWs vertically grown on Si, as well as the first demonstration of InN NWs on Si heterojunction solar cell will be presented.;Keywords. nanowire, epitaxial growth, solar cell.