Growth of Core–Shell InP Nanowires for Photovoltaic Application by Selective-Area Metal Organic Vapor Phase Epitaxy

Abstract

We report on the formation of core–shell pn junction InP nanowires using a catalyst-free selective-area metalorganic vapor-phase epitaxy (SA-MOVPE) method. A periodically aligned dense core–shell InP nanowire array was fabricated and used in photovoltaic device applications. The device exhibited open-circuit voltage (VOC), short-circuit current (ISC) and fill factor (FF) levels of 0.43 V, 13.72 mA/cm2 and 0.57, respectively, which indicated a solar power conversion efficiency of 3.37% under AM1.5G illumination. This study demonstrates that high quality core–shell structure nanowire fabrication is possible by SA-MOVPE and that the nanowire arrays can be used in integrated nanowire photovoltaic devices.