Nanowires enable production of more efficient solar cells

‘Our findings are the first to show that it really is possible to use nanowires to manufacture solar cells’, said Magnus Borgström, a researcher in semiconductor physics.

Until now, the efficiency goal for solar cell nanowires was 10 per cent, but Dr Borgström and his colleagues report an efficiency of 13.8 per cent in the journal Science.

The nanowires are made of the semiconductor material indium phosphide that absorbs sunlight and generates power. The nanowires are assembled on surfaces of 1mm² that each house four million nanowires. A nanowire solar cell can produce an effect per active surface unit several times greater than today’s silicon cells.

Nanowire solar cells have yet to leave a laboratory setting, but the aim is for the technology to be used in large solar power plants in regions such as the south-western US, southern Spain and Africa.

The Lund researchers have now managed to identify the ideal diameter of the nanowires and how to synthesise them.