The hole transporting material (HTM) is responsible for selectively transporting holes and blocking electrons which also plays a crucial role in the efficiency and stability of perovskite solar cells (PSCs). Spiro-MeOTAD is the most popular material, which is expensive and can be easily affected by moisture content. There is a need to find an alternative HTM with sufficiently high resistance to moisture content. In this paper, the influence of some parameters with cuprous oxide (Cu2O) as HTM was investigated using a solar cell capacitance simulator (SCAPS). These include the influence of doping concentration and thickness of the absorber layer, the effect of thickness of ETM and HTM as well as electron affinities of ETM and HTM on the performance of the PSCs. From the obtained results, it was found that the concentration of dopant in the absorber layer, the thickness of ETM and HTM and the electron affinity of HTM and ETM affect the performance of the solar cell. The cell performance improves greatly with the reduction of ETM electron affinity and its thickness. Upon optimization of parameters, power conversion efficiency for this device was found to be 20.42% with a current density of 22.26 mAcm-2, voltage of 1.12 V, and fill factor of 82.20%. The optimized device demonstrates an enhancement of 58.80%, 2.25%, 20.40% and 30.23% in PCE, Jsc, FF, and Voc over the initial cell. The results show that Cu2O in lead-based PSC as HTM is an efficient system and an alternative to spiro-MeOTAD.

The original content of this published Article has an error in the name of one of the co-authors Eli Danladi which was written incorrectly as D. Eli. We highly regret this.

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This study is a follow up to our previously published article on “Numerical Simulation of Copper Indium Gallium Diselenide Solar Cells Using One Dimensional SCAPS Software”. Five more parameters were optimized which are: absorber band gap, absorber electron affinity, buffer layer band gap, buffer layer electron affinity and working temperature using the same simulation tool initially used. When the absorber bandgap was varied between 0.8 eV and 1.6 eV, the efficiency of the solar cell increases until it reached its peak at 27.81%. This occurred at absorber bandgap of 1.4 eV. Other photovoltaic parameters at this optimum value are: Voc of 1.00 V, Jsc of 31.99 mA/cm2 and FF of 87.47 %. On varying the absorber electron affinity from 4.20 eV through 4.55 eV, we obtained an optimum value of 4.45 eV at Voc of 0.82 V, Jsc of 37.96 mA/cm2, FF of 84.99 % and an efficiency of 26.36%. The optimization of buffer bandgap resulted in an optimal value of 3.0 eV, when the buffer bandgap was varied between 1.6 eV and 3.2 eV. The photovoltaic parameters at this optimal value are: Voc of 0.80 V, Jsc of 37.96 mA/cm2, FF of 85.22 % and an efficiency of 25.86%. The effect of buffer electron affinity was studied by varying its value between 4.00 eV and 4.40 eV and its best value was found to be 4.05 eV at photovoltaic parameters with a Voc of 0.82 V, Jsc of 37.96 mA/cm2, FF of 84.98 % and an efficiency of 26.36 %. These optimized values in all parameters were used to simulate a solar cell which resulted to device with performances: Voc of 1.11 V, Jsc of 31.50 mA/cm2, FF of 88.91 % and an efficiency of 31.11 %. On varying the working temperature on the optimized solar cell, the optimized device with its best performance at 270 K with Photovoltaic (PV) values of Voc of 1.15 V, Jsc of 31.55 mA/cm2, FF of 88.64 % and an efficiency of 32.18%. The results obtained were encouraging and can serve as a guide to those involved in practical development of solar cells.

The version in the original Article has an error in the name of the principal author Eli Danladi which was given incorrectly as D. Eli. We highly regret this.