Transfer of ordered and disordered Si nanowires onto alien substrates for the fabrication of third-generation solar cells

Si Nanowires (NWs) have been commonly fabricated via expensive synthesis processes on particular substrates without some critical features such as mechanical flexibility and optical transparency. Lack of these features limit the applications in their potential research area. In this work, we demonstrated that ordered and disordered single crystalline silicon nanowires can be transferred from Si wafer onto a wide range of alien substrates while preserving their original order and alignment on the mother substrate. Vertically well-aligned Si NWs with different lengths and densities were successfully transferred on Ag-pre-coated glasses, transparent-conductive-oxides and metal foils (Cu), which enable ohmic contact formation between Si NWs and the employed substrates, which is essential for the fabrication of electronics and opto-electronics devices. This approach offers promise to construct low-cost device fabrication with highly crystalline semiconductor materials, which is a crucial step for the realization of next generation highly efficient core-shell solar cells. As an illustrative application, the transferred disordered Si NWs were then decorated with a thin layer of CZTS for the fabrication of a third generation solar cell, which has been exhibited the best power conversion efficiency so far in a device constructed with the same material combination.