Theoretical research and simulation of GaAs nanowire arrays in reflection-type photon-enhanced thermionic emission solar converters

In this paper, GaAs was used as the cathode of the photon-enhanced thermionic emission (PETE) solar converter. Based on the one-dimensional continuity equation and boundary conditions, a reflection-type PETE theoretical model was established to simulate the effects of solar concentration, electron affinity, cathode temperature and electron recombination velocity on the current density and the conversion efficiency. For optimizing the performance of the solar converter, we used GaAs nanowire (NW) arrays as the cathode and calculated the influences of NW arrays’ period, duty ratio, and height on the absorbance and the conversion efficiency by combining the theoretical model with the three-dimensional finite-difference time-domain (3D FDTD) method. The results were used to design the structure size of NW arrays, which improved the conversion efficiency of the solar converter to 23.07%. It shows that the GaAs NW arrays are promising PETE cathode materials.