Cubic Silicon Carbide (3C–SiC) as a buffer layer for high efficiency and highly stable CdTe solar cell

Abstract

Cubic Silicon Carbide (3C–SiC) is a potential material for use in photovoltaics for its significant advancement in growth in terms of crystal quality and domain size. Hence, 3C–SiC has been introduced here as an alternative non-toxic buffer layer for heterojunction CdTe solar cell. The solar cell is designed for the study consisted of multi-junction semiconductor layers such as p-CdTe/n-3C–SiC/n-SnO2. Device modeling of the novel CdTe solar cell including the thickness and doping concentration of the novel buffer layer 3C–SiC are investigated and optimized using SCAPS-1D software. Also, the defect density in the buffer layer is studied to see the tolerance of the proposed device structure. The working temperature and incident light intensity are also varied to deduce the effect of environmental conditions on efficient PV operation.