Effect of various layers on improving the photovoltaic efficiency of Al/ZnO/CdS/CdTe/Cu2O/Ni solar cells

Abstract

The photovoltaic (PV) cell structure containing Al/ZnO/CdS/CdTe/Cu2O/Ni has been simulated using the SCAPS-1D software. The PV device includes a zinc oxide (ZnO) transparent conductive oxide (TCO) window layer, a cadmium sulfide (CdS) buffer layer, and a cadmium telluride (CdTe) absorber layer. Additionally, an electron reflected-hole transport layer (ER-HTL) comprising cuprous oxide (Cu2O) is introduced between the absorber layer and the back metal contact. Aluminum (Al) and nickel (Ni) serve as the upper/top and back contact materials, respectively, interconnecting the layers. The back contact materials, the thickness of the absorber, buffer, and window layers, the acceptor density of the absorber layer, the donor density of the buffer layer, the series and shunt resistance, as well as temperature, were all modified to investigate the PV performance of this structure. The PV performance parameters are evaluated through the open-circuit voltage (VOC), short-circuit current (JSC), fill factor (FF), and power conversion efficiency (PCE). To achieve optimal performance, it is recommended to set the acceptor and donor densities for the absorber and buffer layers at 1017 cm−3. These desired densities can be attained by using a window and buffer layer thickness of 100 nm, an absorber layer thickness of 2500 nm, and an ER-HTL of 50 nm. The optimized model demonstrates PV performance characteristics of 1.4811 V for VOC, 28.682434 mA/cm2 for JSC, 74.91 % for FF, and 31.82 % for PCE under the AM 1.5 G spectrum. Furthermore, it exhibits a quantum efficiency of around 100 % at visible wavelengths.