Design and numerical investigations of eco-friendly, non-toxic (Au/CuSCN/CH3NH3SnI3/CdTe/ZnO/ITO) perovskite solar cell and module

Abstract

A comprehensive study for design of higher energy conversion capacity of XSnI3 (X-CH3NH3) based perovskite solar cell has been carried out using solar cell capacitance simulator SCAPS-1D and the irradiation and temperature dependence of solar panel based on proposed ITO/ZnO/CdTe/CH3NH3SnI3/CuSCN/Au configuration has been explored by PVsyst photovoltaic software Package. The insight and suitability of ‘ZnO’ as electron transport layer material (ETLM), CH3NH3SnI3 as perovskite absorber, CuSCN as hole transport layer material (HTLM) and CdTe as active buffer layer has been elaborated for efficient device performance. The structural design of the composition for a unit area was optimized by variation in thickness of absorber layer, temperature and defect densities at interfaces. The response of the device in perspective of carrier generation and recombination, defects and defect densities was thoroughly explored. The energy conversion efficiency (ECE) presented in this work for optimized parameters is observed to be 21.24% with Voc = 0.8149 V, Jsc = 34.0535 mA/cm2 and FF = 76.57%. Investigations reveal that optimized thickness of perovskite absorber layer (∼4.72 µm) indicate the maximum extent for Jsc, FF and percentage efficiency due to creation of additional electron-hole pairs at standard applied conditions. The simulated electrical parameters obtained from SCAPS-1D were used as an input in PVsyst software package for solar module consisting of 60 cells and dimensions (2.2 × 1.1) m. The panel performance in context of output power, incident irradiation and temperature has been calculated and the simulation results for a specific geographical location are reported.