Design optimization of solar cell with molybdenum sulfide as light absorber

Molybdenum sulfide (MoS2) has been suggested as a light-absorbing material to enhance solar cell efficiency because of its suitable electrical and optical properties. However, very few experimental results have been reported with efficiencies below 10%. In this work, a solar cell device has been studied numerically using MoS2 absorber layer sandwiched between an electron transport layer (ETL) and a hole transport layer (HTL). Numerical simulations provide a powerful tool to assess the potential of various device configurations and materials to achieve high performance. Various HTLs are analyzed, including Cu2O, CuSCN, CuI, NiO, and Spiro-OMETAD, whereas ZnO is used as an ETL. The key parameters that determine the power conversion efficiency of the device were analyzed, namely the short circuit current (J(SC)), the open circuit voltage (V-OC), and the fill factor (FF). Both p-type and n-type MoS2 were considered. As for losses, they are summed in the band-to-band recombination in the bulk of MoS2 . The results demonstrate that power conversion efficiencies exceeding 20% can be obtained by optimizing the cell design. (C) 2018 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)