Substrates used in perovskite solar cells as front contact are usually transparent conductive oxide (TCO) to allow light to pass through the device. The dominating TCO employed in perovskite solar cells are indium-doped tin oxide (ITO) and fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO). However, it is imperative to investigate alternative TCOs due to the scarcity of indium metal, relatively low electrical conductivity and high leakage current in ITO and FTO. In this study, simulation has been carried out using Solar Capacitance Simulator (SCAPS) to investigate the efficiency of methyl-ammonium tin iodide (CH3NH3SnI3) based solar cells including various TCOs such as boron-doped zinc oxide (BZO), molybdenum trioxide (MoO3) and zinc oxide (ZnO). TCO parameters such as thickness, donor concentration and operating temperature were varied to study their influence on device performance. The best device performance was achieved using MoO3 with power conversion efficiency of 25.83 % and Jsc, Voc and FF of 32.44 mA/cm2, 0.979 V and 81.38 % respectively. The work shows the potential of fabricating an improved CH3NH3SnI3 perovskite solar cell with MoO3 as front contact.
In this work, we study the thermal stability of a hydrothermally treated stainless steel (SS) selective solar absorber by annealing in air in a temperature range between 300 °C and 700 °C for a soaking time of 2 h. Thermal stability testing in the presence of air is critical if the vacuum is breached. Therefore, the SS was characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), mechanical, and optical techniques. The XRD analysis shows that the grain size of the as-treated absorber is 67 nm, whereas those of the annealed absorbers were found to be in the range between 66 and 38 nm. The phase of the as-treated and annealed SS was further identified by XRD as Fe2O3. The EDS result shows that the elemental components of the SS were C, Cr, Fe, and O. The strain (ε) and stress (σ) calculated for the as-treated absorber are 1.2 × 10−1 and −2.9 GPa, whereas the annealed absorbers are found in the range of 4.4 × 10−1 to 5.2 × 10−1 and −121.6 to −103.2 GPa, respectively, at 300–700 °C. The as-treated SS absorbers exhibit a good spectra selectivity of 0.938/0.431 = 2.176, which compares with 0.941/0.403 = 2.335 after being annealed at 300 °C and 0.884/0.179 = 4.939 after being annealed at 700 °C. These results indicate a small improvement in absorptivity (0.941) and emissivity (0.403) after annealing at 300 °C, followed by a significant decrease after annealing at 700 °C. The obtained analysis confirms that the annealed SS absorber exhibits excellent selectivity and is suitable to withstand any thermal condition (≤700 °C) in air. Thus, using a cost-effective approach as demonstrated in this study, the as-treated and annealed SS absorber could be used for photo-thermal conversion applications.
Adobe buildings have been in used over a long period of time in many parts of the world, more especially in the African continent. It has been used to satisfy the shelter need for human comfort, animals comfort and preservation of food crops that are very important for human lives. To prevent the heat from the sun radiation to have a severer effect on the items, Adobe building was used for its ability to control temperature and humidity fluctuations within the building. In this work, two rooms were constructed one with adobe and the other with an additives material to the adobe. A study on the thermal performance of the two rooms was carried out to compare the inside rooms temperature and relative humidity. It was found that the average differences in the inside temperature and relative humidity were -2 degrees and +1 percent respectively, which shows that averagely the temperature of the improved room is lower than that of the control room while the converse is the case for the relative humidity.
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