Numerical study of semi-transparent thin film heterojunction p-CuO/nZnO/AZO/ITO solar cells device model using SCAPS-1D

Abstract

In the current time, transparent and semitransparent solar cells in photovoltaic industry have drawn important attention owing to their potential use as solar windows, and energy harvesting devices for building, vehicle integration and flexible electronics. In this work, a semitransparent thin film heterojunction solar cells device structure of p-CuO/nZnO/AZO/ITO was numerically modeled using SCAPS-1D software tools. The cell’s performance was investigated in terms of the different material layer properties, such as the thickness and carrier concentration or doping level. The simulation results of copper based semi-transparent thin film solar cell (TFSC) as the bottom cell model indicates that the highest efficiency was achieved at 8.9116 %, with the thickness and carrier concentration of n-ZnO material layer set at 20 nm, and 5.0 x 1018 cm-3 respectively, whereas the thickness of CuO absorber layer was fixed at 110 nm. Finally, the overall results show that CuO based absorber layer exhibits potential as photoactive material particularly for semitransparent thin film solar cells applications.