Buffer Layered PbS Colloidal Quantum Dot Solar Cell With Enhanced Efficiency

Abstract

In this paper, a novel architecture of zinc oxide (ZnO) buffer layered lead sulphide (PbS) colloidal quantum dot (CQD) solar cell is proposed. The proposed CQD solar cell is of the architecture of glass substrate: fluorine tin oxide (FTO)/ZnO/titanium dioxide (TiO 2 )/PbS- tetra-butyl ammonium iodide (PbS-TBAI)/PbS-1, 2-ethanedithiol (PbS-EDT)/gold (Au) – contacts with power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 15.28% and is modeled and investigated in solar cell capacitance simulator (SCAPS). Here FTO is the oxide layer (OL), TiO 2 is used as an electron transport layer (ETL), PbS colloidal quantum dots (CQDs) layer treated with PbS-TBAI serve the purpose of generating electron-hole pairs whenever a solar cell is exposed to solar insolation and PbS CQDs layer treated with EDT is used to extract the holes. The impact of varying layer thicknesses on PCE, open-circuit voltage (V oc ), short circuit current density (J sc ) and fill factor (FF) is also discussed in the paper. The quantum efficiency (QE) of the proposed solar cell reveals that the proposed PbS- CQD solar can capture a wider range of incident light wavelengths across the broader range of solar spectrum depicting that this research effort can become a useful guide in the future fabrication of high efficient PbS CQD solar cells.