A numerical study on the influence of interface recombination on performance of carbon nanotube/GaAs solar cells

Abstract

Carbon nanotubes (CNT) have unique electronic properties and remarkable optical properties. Despite of on layer thickness of CNTs, it has able to absorb photons from visible to far infrared and terahertz. These unique properties lets to create heterojunction devices by semiconductor/CNTs or metal/CNTs junctions e.g. photodiodes, sensor and heterojunction solar cell. The CNTs can play the role of a heterojunction component for charge separation as a high conductive network for charge transport and as a transparent electrode for light illumination and charge collection. The main objective of the present article is to establish a relation between interface recombination and the characteristics parameters of the heterojunction solar cell based on armchair single walled carbon nanotube as absorber and GaAs as window. It is shown that by increasing the interface recombination open circuit voltage decreases dramatically. Depletion current, J–V characteristic and ideality factor variation in terms of interface recombination has been calculated. Interface recombination at the SWCNT/GaAs interface of the cell leads to a considerable drop of the cell voltage and to a lesser extent to the associated reduction in the cell short circuit current.