A new EU FP7 project aims to develop cost effective and highly efficient solar cells with silicon nano-rods. Funded with Euros 2.9M from the EU, project ROD_SOL is coordinated by the Institute fur Photonische Technologien (IPHT) in Jena, Germany. Thin film solar cells, based on non-toxic, abundant and air-stable silicon will probably, based on forecasts, dominate the photovoltaic market in the future and thus replace bulk silicon from its leading position. This process is fostered by the strong cost reduction potential due to highly effective materials utilisation at low energy consumption. However, thin film Si suffers from inherently small grains, which limits efficiencies to ~10% due to carrier recombination at grain boundaries. A radical innovation of the Si thin film materials synthesis route is needed to circumvent this problem.
