Simulation and Optimization of Lead-Based Perovskite Solar Cells with Cuprous Oxide as a P-type Inorganic Layer

Abstract

The hole transporting material (HTM) is responsible for selectively transporting holes and blocking electrons which also plays a crucial role in the efficiency and stability of perovskite solar cells (PSCs). Spiro-MeOTAD is the most popular material, which is expensive and can be easily affected by moisture content. There is a need to find an alternative HTM with sufficiently high resistance to moisture content. In this paper, the influence of some parameters with cuprous oxide (Cu2O) as HTM was investigated using a solar cell capacitance simulator (SCAPS). These include the influence of doping concentration and thickness of the absorber layer, the effect of thickness of ETM and HTM as well as electron affinities of ETM and HTM on the performance of the PSCs. From the obtained results, it was found that the concentration of dopant in the absorber layer, the thickness of ETM and HTM and the electron affinity of HTM and ETM affect the performance of the solar cell. The cell performance improves greatly with the reduction of ETM electron affinity and its thickness. Upon optimization of parameters, power conversion efficiency for this device was found to be 20.42% with a current density of 22.26 mAcm-2, voltage of 1.12 V, and fill factor of 82.20%. The optimized device demonstrates an enhancement of 58.80%, 2.25%, 20.40% and 30.23% in PCE, Jsc, FF, and Voc over the initial cell. The results show that Cu2O in lead-based PSC as HTM is an efficient system and an alternative to spiro-MeOTAD.

Numerical Modeling and Analysis of HTM-Free Heterojunction Solar Cell Using SCAPS-1D

“…The interface defect layer (IDL) is introduced in the TiO 2 /CH 3 NH 3 PbI 3 interface to investigate the influence of interfacial recombination on the photovoltaic performance. The work functions of the front contact and back contact are 4.40 eV and 5.93 eV respectively [18,23]. A working temperature of 300K, solar spectrum AM1.5 and a Scanning voltage of 0-1.3 V were used for all simulations.…”

“…Defect parameters of interfaces and absorber[19,20,23] …”

“…Simulation parameters of PSCs devices[19,20,23,24] …”

Modeling and Simulation of Lead-Free Perovskite Solar Cell Using SCAPS-1D

“…Perovskite absorber has many advantages for its applications in photovoltaic devices, including tuned band gap, small exciton energy, excellent bipolar carrier transport, long electron-hole diffusion, and amazingly high tolerance to defects [1][2][3]. Owing to this astonishing properties exhibited by this material, its efficiency has increased from 3.9 % [4] to over 23 % [5,6]. However, there are some limitations in realizing its outdoor applications, such as instability, electron transport resistance between TiO 2 and perovskite absorber, the use of poisonous lead in the absorber etc.…”

“…The reason is because good theoretical models and available data on defect, band offsets, carrier density at grain boundaries, and the interfaces has not been established. Therefore, good numerical model to establish PV devices is an indispensable tool to better grasp the underlying mechanism preventing optimum performance of PSCs devices [5]. In this paper, numerical modelling and simulation of lead free PSCs with inorganic copper iodide as HTM was done with SCAPS.…”