Assessment of different optimized anti-reflection coatings for ZnO/Si heterojunction solar cells

Abstract

The heterojunction (HJ) solar cell is one of the superlative alternatives to upgrade traditional single homojunction silicon-based solar cells. The present paper reports on the simulation investigation for examining the high-performance Zinc oxide (ZnO)/Si solar cells with different anti-reflection coatings (ARC), optimizing the absorber, window thickness, and ARC layers. In this study, the parameters were selected, like ZnO as a window layer, Si as an absorber layer, and the thickness of different ARC layers to perform PC1D (personal computer one dimensional) simulation. Aluminum trioxide (Al2O3), Magnesium oxide (MgO), Magnesium fluoride (MgF2), and Titanium nitrate (TIN) were used as a single layer. Without any ARC layer, 18.8% power conversion efficiency (PCE) and 21.3% PCE were recorded for ZnO/Si solar cells at zero reflectance. The MgF2 as a single ARC layer of 110 nm thickness has achieved a PCE of 20.8% compared to other anti-reflection coating materials at an absorber layer of 160 μm and window layer of 0.5 μm. The optimized value of carrier lifetime was found to be 100μs for ARC layers. The values of PCE, Voc and Isc gradually increased with increasing carrier lifetime. The maximum values of Voc = 0.6580, Isc = 0.0386 A and PCE with 20.8% were achieved by MgF2 ARC layer at optimized parameters.