An investigation into the effects of band gap and doping concentration on Cu(In,Ga)Se2 solar cell efficiency

Abstract

A simulation study of a Cu(In1 − xGax)Se2 (CIGS) thin film solar cell has been carried out with maximum efficiency of 24.27 % (Voc = 0.856 V, Jsc = 33.09 mA/cm2 and FF = 85.73 %). This optimized efficiency is obtained by determining the optimum band gap of the absorber and varying the doping concentration of constituent layers. The Ga content denoted by x = Ga/(In + Ga) is selected as 0.35 which provides the optimum band gap of absorber layer as 1.21 eV. Theoretically, the effects of Ga fraction “x” on CIGS absorber band gap are investigated and to avoid the lattice mismatch effect, the efficiency measurements due to the CIGS band gaps >1.21 eV have not come to the consideration. A one-dimensional simulator ADEPT/F 2.1 has been used to analyze the fabricated device parameters and hence to calculate open circuit voltage, short circuit current, fill factor and efficiency.

Non-Toxic Buffer Layers in Flexible Cu(In,Ga)Se2Photovoltaic Cell Applications with Optimized Absorber Thickness

“…The effects of CdS buffer layer thickness, the various buffer layer material parameters, and the CIGS absorber thickness are also taken into account during the simulation. The base parameters for the CIGS cell structure with CdS buffer used for the simulation are shown in Table 1 [1,3,4,11,16,17]. The most important parameters of different buffer layer materials needed for the simulations are depicted in Table 2 [4,[17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31].…”

“…Solar cells based on thin-film CuInSe 2 (CIS) and Cu(In 1−x Ga x )Se 2 (CIGS) absorbers have major contributions in photovoltaic technology due to their lower cost, flexible modules, and high energy conversion efficiency of more than 21% [1][2][3][4]. The absorber works as a p-type doped area into a CIS and CIGS model with a typical thickness of 1-2 μm [5].…”

“…For the CIS absorber layer, the band gap is about 1 eV (0.98-1.04 eV) [6]. By introducing the gallium content, [Ga]/([Ga + In]), into the CIS absorber, the band gap of CIGS can be varied from 1.04 to 1.7 eV [4] although the optimal band gap of CIGS ranges from 1.16 eV to 1.38 eV due to the Ga grading in the CIS absorber [7][8][9][10]. To show the effects of absorber band gap on the properties of the CIGS solar cell, in this study, the CIGS band gap is optimized as 1.25 eV for [Ga]/([Ga + In]) = 0.45 [11].…”

Impacts of Temperature on the Performance of Cdte Based Thin-Film Solar Cell

“…However, as mentioned earlier, ADEPT 2.1 has been used in this work to simulate the numerical data correspond to the different semiconductor materials constituting CdTe based thin-film solar cell. Table 2 shows the most essential values of the device parameters of CdTe solar cell needed to conduct the simulation [3,9,[16][17][18][19]. …”

Dataset demonstrating the modeling of a high performance Cu(In,Ga)Se 2 absorber based thin film photovoltaic cell

“…Along with this dataset, the contact parameters and the conditions under which the simulation was conducted have been demonstrated in Table 2, Table 3 respectively. All of these data has been extracted from the published literatures [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9]. Fig.…”