Carbon nanotubes film preparation on 3D structured silicon substrates by spray coating technique for application in solar cells

This paper firstly reports the preparation of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) film on silicon substrate of three-dimensional (3D) inverted pyramid structure (IPS) by spray coating. The effect of different substrate temperatures, spraying times and opening sizes on CNTs sidewall covering properties were investigated. The results show that the CNTs covering ratio of sidewall is much lower than that of flat surface and gradually decrease with depth. 40μm×40μm opening obtained the best sidewall covering by CNTs suspension of 40μg/ml at 120°C after 30min spraying so that the CNTs can reach the bottom of IPS and cover about 68.9% sidewall area. At last, it is demonstrated that the output power of the CNTs film-Si solar cell can be enhanced 5.7 times by this method compared to that of the plane structure