Modeling and Performance Analysis of Highly Efficient Copper Indium Gallium Selenide Solar Cell with Cu₂O Hole Transport Layer Using Solar Cell Capacitance Simulator in One Dimension

Abstract

Herein, the widely available and cheapest cuprous oxide (Cu2O) as hole transport layer (HTL) is proposed to improve the performance of thin‐film copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) solar cell. Solar Cell Capacitance Simulator in One Dimension (SCAPS‐1D) is utilized to design and study output characteristics of the modeled photovoltaic (PV) cell. A comparison between the proposed cell with Cu2O HTL and the reference CIGS solar cell is presented. The PV performances of CIGS solar cells are analyzed by changing thickness, carrier density and defects of different layers, operating temperatures, and recombination velocity at back contact. Optimal thicknesses of Cu2O HTL, CIGS absorber, cadmium sulfide (CdS) buffer, and the fluorine‐doped tin oxide (FTO) window layer are obtained to be 0.3, 0.8, 0.05, and 0.05 μm, respectively. Efficiency of 30.30% is achieved for the proposed CIGS PV device with Cu2O HTL. The simulated results imply that the proposed Cu2O as HTL can be used to show proficient and cost‐effective thin‐film CIGS PV cells.

Evaluating the performance of efficient Cu2NiSnS4 solar cell—A two stage theoretical attempt and comparison to experiments

“…Thus, the performance of the proposed hetero-structure can be realized by analyzing the lattice mismatch percentage. In this study, lattice mismatch δ (%), which is an interface feature defining factor, in the grown film on the substrate can be calculated using equation (4) as [ 43 , 52 , 64 , 65 ]. where a s is the lattice constant of the substrate on which an epitaxial layer is grown and the a e is the lattice constant of a layer.…”

Investigation on the Performance Enhancement of Heterojunction SnS Thin-Film Solar Cell with a Zn3P2 Hole Transport Layer and a TiO2 Electron Transport Layer

“…Beyond the doping density of 10 15 cm –3 , PCE, V oc , and FF are enlarged with a further growing SnS doping level. The generation of more charge carriers with expanding doping concentration density in the absorber improves the cell’s performances. ,, It can also be seen that J sc is approximately similar up to the carrier density of 5 × 10 16 cm –3 and then is slightly diminished with rising doping level. The minor degradation of J sc at the high doping level may be due to further creation of hole trap sites through p-type absorber by adding more acceptor impurity, , consequently enhancing the recombination between the created hole trap states and photogenerated electrons according to the Coulomb force. , Herein, a carrier density of 5 × 10 16 is preferred as the optimized absorber doping level for the proposed SnS-based TFSC by considering the manufacturing expense and admirable performance.…”

“…The outputs detected in this work are decently consistent with the PV behaviors described in preceding works. 45,82,84 It is also found that the variations of the output parameters are not significant for an ETL thickness less than 0.06 μm. On the other hand, insufficient photoinduced carriers, owing to a lesser extent of radiance reaching the absorber across the thick ETL, may result in a slight decrease in J sc , thereby declining the conversion efficiency to some extent at the thick ETL.…”

Performance evaluation of WS2 as buffer and Sb2S3 as hole transport layer in CZTS solar cell by numerical simulation

“…The minor current due to poor photo‐generated carriers with the thicker buffer results this PV behaviors 87,88 . A reduced extent of short wavelength photons may derive to the absorber with increasing the buffer thickness 88–90 . Moreover, the recombination of few photo‐induced electrons and holes produced during photon absorption by the absorber with defects at buffer/absorber interface before going to front contact results in the slight diminution in efficiency at the thick buffer layer.…”

“…87,88 A reduced extent of short wavelength photons may derive to the absorber with increasing the buffer thickness. [88][89][90] Moreover, the recombination of few photo-induced electrons and holes produced during photon absorption by the absorber with defects at buffer/absorber interface before going to front contact results in the slight diminution in efficiency at the thick buffer layer. Therefore, a thin buffer layer is inhibited to realize noteworthy PV outputs.…”