The performance of Perovskite solar cells with silicon carbide as an interfacial layer

Abstract

The current work involved the numerical simulation of investigating the impact of conduction band offset (CBO) on the perovskite solar cell parameters. The solar cell structure under investigation comprises the (Spiro OMe TAD), (CH3NH3PbI3), and (SnO2) as HTL, the absorber layer, and ETL with electron affinities (χ) of (-2.45, -3.9, and -3.75) eV respectively. The conduction band alignment was controlled by inserting an interfacial layer between the absorber and ETL. The inserting layer is a thin layer of 3C-SiC material. Before utilizing the interfacial layer, a parametric study was attained, which included the doping variation and thickness variation of each layer. According to the findings, the device performs best at a thickness of 200 nm, 400 nm, 300 nm for HTL, perovskite absorber layer, and ETL respectively, with a doping concentration of 1019 cm-3, 1014 cm-3, and 1019 cm-3 for the same layers. These parameters provide a Jsc, Voc, FF, and PCE of 26.1 mA.cm-2, 1.11 V, 83.23%, and 24.19% respectively. Utilizing 3C-SiC as an interfacial layer with thickness 100 nm and doping 1018 cm-3 improved the performance of the device. According to the electron affinity for the proposed structure (the absorber layer and ETL) with the interfacial layer produce spike-spike band alignment. The results showed that the spike-spike band structure with (1= 0.07) eV for absorber layer with 3C-SiC and (2=0.08) eV for 3C-SiC interfacial layer and SnO2 as ETL, produces a good improvement in the cell performance with an increase in PCE (from 24.19 % to 28.36 %).