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CC carried out the experiments and drafted the manuscript. BC guided the study and revised the manuscript. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript.”
“Background Nanowire-based solar cells hold promise for next generation photovoltaics. In particular, silicon micro/nanowires have attracted considerable interest due to their potential advantages, including light trapping effects to enhance broadband optical absorption [1, 2] and the possibility to engineer radial p-n junctions using a core-shell structure, which in turn increases the

carrier collection [3–14]. In a radial p-n junction – a promising approach – crystalline silicon (c-Si) micro/nanowires are used Etofibrate as core and high-temperature diffused layers or low-temperature deposited silicon layers form the shell. These core-shell micro/nanowire array structures are expected to reduce the requirements on the quality and the quantity of Si needed for the fabrication of solar cell. Thus far, several methods have been established for the controlled growth of silicon nanowires (SiNWs). For instance, highly parallel SiNWs of desired lengths and diameters ranging from a few tens of nanometers to a few hundreds of nanometers could conventionally be obtained by aqueous electroless chemical etching of single crystalline silicon wafers [15–20]. Similarly, hydrogenated amorphous silicon (α-Si:H) can be deposited by the plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) method. According to this report, an efficiency of 7.