Abstract
For further uptake in the solar cell industry, n-ZnO/p-Si single heterojunction solar cell has attracted much attention of the research community in recent years. This paper reports the influence of bandgap and/or electron affinity tuning of zinc oxide on the performance of n-ZnO/p-Si single heterojunction photovoltaic cell using PC1D simulations. The simulation results reveal that the open circuit voltage and fill factor can be improved significantly by optimizing valence-band and conduction-band off-sets by engineering the bandgap and electron affinity of zinc oxide. An overall conversion efficiency of more than 20.3% can be achieved without additional cost or any change in device structure. It has been found that the improvement in efficiency is mainly due to reduction in conduction band offset that has a significant influence on minority carrier current.
Highlights
Zinc oxide (ZnO) is an emerging material in the semiconductor industry due to its abundance and being environmentally friendly
The absorption spectrum of ZnO of thickness ~0.5 μm measured in our lab using the Filmetrics tool was used in the simulation to investigate the effect of electron affinity
This is in accordance with the model reported by Zhao et al [29]. We attribute this increase in the bandgap of ZnO to the well-known Burstein-Moss effect in which effective bandgap of a heavily doped semiconductor is increased as the absorption edge in the conduction band moves to higher energies because all states close to the conduction band edge are filled. It is ascertained using PC1D simulations that the open circuit voltage of a n-ZnO/p-Si single heterojunction solar cell can be significantly improved by tuning the bandgap and/or electron affinity of ZnO by doping or alloying
Summary
Zinc oxide (ZnO) is an emerging material in the semiconductor industry due to its abundance and being environmentally friendly. Few groups have recently reported simulation results simulation results optimizing different parameters of ZnO/Si solar cell. Vallisree et al used Silvaco ATLAS simulator and reported that efficiency up to 14.46%. We report simulation based optimization of bandgap and electron affinity of ZnO to. We report simulation based optimization of bandgap and electron affinity of ZnO enhance the conversion efficiency of a ZnO/Si single heterojunction solar cell. The effects of valence-band and conduction-band off-set engineering on the open circuit voltage (VOC ), short circuit current density (JSC ), fill factor (FF), and engineering on the open circuit voltage (VOC), short circuit current density (JSC), fill factor (FF), and overall conversion efficiency (η) have been investigated using PC1D software. The simulations prove overall conversion efficiency (η) have been investigated using PC1D software. That the conversion efficiency as high as 20.3% can be obtained from ZnO/Si solar cell
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