Investigation of thin-film p-BaSi₂/n-CdS heterostructure towards semiconducting silicide based high efficiency solar cell

Abstract

In this article, semiconducting Barium Silicide (BaSi2) absorber based novel heterostructure thin-film solar cell (TFSC) has been studied in details. The solar cell has been numerically simulated and intensely analyzed by Solar cell Capacitance Simulator (SCAPS). Layer thickness was varied from 100 to 3000 nm for p+-BaSi2 absorber, 20 to 200 nm for both n-CdS buffer, and n+-SnO2:F window layers to optimize the device. Hitherwards, the impurities concentration for acceptor (NA) and donor (ND) ions was optimized for each layer through ample variation. The influence of single-donor and acceptor type bulk defect densities has been investigated thoroughly in p+-BaSi2 and n-CdS materials, respectively. An efficiency >30% is achievable ideally with a 2 μm thick BaSi2 absorber without incorporating defects whereas it reduces to 26.32% with only 1.2 μm thick absorber including certain amount of defects. Cell thermal stability and alteration of cell parameters were studied under cell operating temperature from to Finally, the effect of series (Rs) and shunt (Rsh) resistances on proposed cell has been investigated meticulously. This newly designed solar cell structure proclaims the chance of fabricating a resourceful, low cost, and highly efficient TFSC near future.

Design and Simulation of FeSi2‐Based Novel Heterojunction Solar Cells for Harnessing Visible and Near‐Infrared Light

“…This can be attributed to the associated increase in the dark current with a thicker absorber, which reduces V OC in that cell. It has been reported that increasing the absorber thickness in a BaSi 2 /CdS/fluorine‐doped tin oxide solar cell causes V OC to decrease gradually . A very similar decreasing fashion is also observed for a‐Si:H solar cells .…”

“…More recently, it has been reported that the orthorhombic barium disilicide (β‐BaSi 2 ) can be applied as the best BSF layer for performance enhancement in CIGS‐based solar cells . The potential of BaSi 2 for solar cell applications has also been reported by many groups …”

“…The recombination rate is raised likewise. This reduces the saturation current while maximizing the reverse saturation current …”

Simulating the performance of a highly efficient CuBi2O4-based thin-film solar cell

“…Therefore, a thin buffer layer is anticipated to achieve outstanding solar cell performances. The optimum thickness of the buffer layer is selected to be 60 nm for the following calculations in this simulation work, which is consistent with the buffer thickness employed in the previous works [37,39,40]. In this simulation, the effect of the CdS donor density ranging from 1 × 10 12 to 5 × 10 18 cm −3 with 2000-nm-thick absorber (acceptor density of 3.7 × 10 18 cm −3 ), 60-nm-CdS, and 50-nm-FTO (donor density of 1 × 10 18 cm −3 ) is analyzed.…”

“…The work function values of 4.28 eV [38] and 5.15 eV [38] are employed for the aluminum (Al) as front contact and nickel (Ni) as back contact, respectively. The thermal velocity of 1 × 10 7 cm/s for electrons and holes in each layer has been put during the simulation work [37,39]. The surface recombination velocities for both electrons and holes are set to 10 7 and 10 5 cm/s at front contact 10 5 and 10 7 cm/s at back contact, respectively [36,39].…”