Performance enhancement of CIGS thin-film solar cell

Abstract

In the present study, A thin-film solar cell based on Cu(In,Ga)Se2 (CIGS) is carried out using two-dimensional device simulator called Silvaco–Atlas. A basic CIGS solar cell was simulated under the room temperature of 298 k. It is found that the obtained simulation results agree very well with recent published experimental results, which validate our used model. The aim of this study is to enhance the CIGS solar cell performance by optimizing its parameters. For this purpose, the CIGS cell layer thicknesses and doping densities have been optimized. With this optimization process, the cell efficiency increases from 22.9 to 27.5%. In several research studies, the CIGS solar cells were tested under the room temperature but the realistic operating temperature is varied. In order to optimize the operating temperature and study its effect on the CIGS cell performance, the operating temperature was varied. The results show that as the temperature decreases, the cell performance increases. At the optimum temperature of 240 k, the CIGS cell achieves a very important efficiency of 32.45%.