“Quantum Coaxial Cables” for Solar Energy Harvesting.

Type II core−shell nanowires based on III−V and II−VI semiconductors are designed to provide the highly desirable but not readily available featureefficient charge separationand concurrently address the different material challenges specific for a few key renewable energy applications:  including hydrogen generation via photoelectrochemical water splitting, dye-sensitized solar cells, and conventional solar cells. They also open up new avenues for studying novel physics and material sciences in reduced dimensionality of very unusual quasi-one-dimensional systems. A first-principles density function theory within the local density approximation (LDA) is used for the electronic structure calculation and a valence-force-field method for the strutural relaxation, and emprical corrections to the LDA errors are applied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]