High-efficient Schottky-junction silicon solar cell using silver nanowires covering nitrogen-doped amorphous carbon

Synthesized graphene (Gr) on metal substrates that requires additional surface-to-surface transfer procedure to form Gr-on-silicon (Gr-Si) Schottky-junction configuration, which in turn results in the photovoltaic degradation caused by both mechanical damages and chemical contaminations during several wet chemical steps. This current issue has motivated us to develop alternative Schottky-junction configuration using silver nanowires (AgNWs) covering nitrogen (N)-doped amorphous carbon (a-C) films annealed in the temperature range 750–900 °C. Compared to the Schottky-junction Si solar cell based on 900 °C annealed N-doped a-C films (CN-900-Si) with only Ag grid, all of AgNWs-CN-900-Si solar cells exhibit the significant enhancement of photovoltaic characteristics. Consequently, the remarkable power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 6.17% is achieved on 0.2 wt% AgNWs-CN-900-Si solar cell, which is far superior to that of the CN-900-Si solar cell with only Ag grid (~0.13%). Furthermore, the 0.2 wt% AgNWs-CN-900-SiNWs solar cell shows the highest short-circuit current density (JSC) of 23.42 mA/cm2 and PCE of 7.67%, which is a PCE enhancement of ~24% when compared to the 0.2 wt% AgNWs-CN-900-Si solar cell. This study demonstrates that AgNWs network can accelerate the charge carrier extraction from Schottky-contact between CN-900 and n-Si substrate, leading to greatly reduced series resistance that results in significantly enhanced photovoltaic characteristics. [Display omitted] •Nitrogen (N)-doped a-C films were prepared by thermal annealing of N-containing as-deposited a-C films.•PCEs of these Schottky-junction solar cells are still low caused by relatively high resistances of N-doped a-C films.•AgNWs-CN-900-Si solar cells exhibit the remarkable enhancement of photovoltaic characteristics.•0.2 wt% AgNWs-CN-900-SiNWs solar cell shows the highest JSC of 23.42 mA/cm2 and PCE of 7.67%.