Available online at www.sciencedirect.com 2 nd International Science, Social Science, Engineering and Energy Conference 2010: Engineering Science and Management Effects of Interface Recombination on the Performance of SWCNT\GaAs Heterojunction Solar Cell Khalili Khadije a, *, Asghar Asgari a,b , Hossein Movla c ; Alireza Mottaghizadeh d , Hamed Azari Najafabadi a a Photonics-Electronics Group, Research Institute for Applied Physics and Astronomy (RIAPA), The University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran b School of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia c Department of Solid State Physics, Faculty of Physics, The University of Tabriz, Tabriz d Institut des Nanosciences de Paris (INSP), Université Paris 06, Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France. Elsevier use only: Received 15 November 2010; revised 15 December 2010; accepted 20 December 2010 Abstract This paper indicated a theoretical model for describing the effects of the interface recombination on the heterojunction solar cell parameters based on single wall carbon nanotube and GaAs as p-n junction. By choosing the zigzag nanotube and GaAs layer, it is shown that by increasing the interface recombination, short circuit current and open circuit voltage decrease. Depletion current, J-V characteristic and ideality factor variation in terms of interface recombination have been calculated. © 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Keywords: Single wall carbon nanotube; Heterojunction solar cell; J -V characteristics. 1. Introduction Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have appropriate properties that make them good alternative for building modern optoelectronic devices such as high electron mobility transistors (HEMT), field effect transistors (FET), p-n junction diodes and solar cells (SCs) [1], [2]. The nanotubes can play the role of a heterojunction component for charge separation, high conductive network for charge transport and, transparent electrode for light illumination and charge collection [3], [4]. It is shown that the recombination at the interface is a significant loss current across the interface, thus reduces the photocurrent in the heterojunction solar cells [5]. This paper indicated a model which presents the effects of interface recombination in the three-dimensional (3D) heterojunction SC based on SWCNT and GaAs. The structure of this solar cell is shown in the Fig.1(left). Proposed * Corresponding author. Tel.: +66-42-772-391; fax: +66-42-772-392 E-mail address: kh.khalili87@ms.tabrizu.ac.ir © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. 1877–7058 © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.proeng.2011.03.051 Procedia Engineering 8 (2011) 275–279 Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.