Textile Solar Cells Based on SiC Microwires

The solar cell concept presented here is based on 3C-SiC nano- or microwires and conju¬gated polymers. Therefore the silicon carbide wires are fabricated by a sol-gel route including a car-bothermal reduction step, allowing growth with predetermined uniform diameters between 0.1 and 2μm and lengths up to several centimetres. The design of our photovoltaic device is therein based on a p-i-n structure, well known e.g. from silicon photovoltaics, involving an intrinsic semiconduc¬tor as the central photoactive layer, sandwiched between two complementary doped wide-bandgap semiconductors giving the driving force for charge separation. In our case the 3C-SiC microwires act as the electron acceptor and simultaneously as carrier material for all involved components of the photovoltaic element.