Investigation of All-Oxide Thin-Film Solar Cell With p-SnOx as Absorber Layer

We propose an n-ZnO/p-SnOx heterojunction solar cell as a novel pathway to realize all-oxide photo-voltaics that offer attractive features such as stability, cost-effectiveness, and nontoxicity. TCAD device simulator was used to investigate the performance of n-ZnO/p-SnOx thin-film solar cell using inputs on material parameters of SnOx obtained experimentally. In this study, we considered the effects of SnOx parameters, namely, bandgap and electron affinity on the performance of solar cell. Electrical transport models applied in modeling include the effects of interfacial recombination, tunneling, band discontinuity, and minority carrier lifetime. Our simulation results show that a maximum power conversion efficiency of similar to 15.5% can be obtained in a window of an optimum combination of bandgap and electron affinity of SnOx layer. Further enhancement in efficiency is achievable by improving the minority carrier lifetime.

Automated summary

We propose an n-ZnO/p-SnOx heterojunction solar cell as a novel pathway to realize all-oxide photo-voltaics. The effects of material parameters and transport models on the performance of the solar cell were investigated using TCAD device simulator. The simulation results showed that optimizing the bandgap and electron affinity of the SnOx layer can lead to a maximum power conversion efficiency of approximately 15.5%.