article · Materials Technology
Numerical simulations using the Solar Cell Capacitance Simulator software offer insights into the ideal physical parameters for copper oxide nanostructure solar cells. The investigation evaluated how variations in window layer thickness, absorber layer thickness, bandgap, and carrier concentration influence basic device performance. Findings indicate that maintaining a window layer thickness between 0.3 and 0.4 micrometres produces an efficiency of approximately 6.5 percent. To achieve higher efficiencies of around 8 percent, the absorber layer requires a bandgap greater than 2.1 electronvolts alongside a donor carrier concentration below 10 to the power of 16 per cubic centimetre. Overall device behaviour is fundamentally governed by built-in potential, depletion layer width, charge carrier collection length, minority carrier lifetime, and recombination rates. These simulated baselines offer specific physical targets to assist in the fabrication of more efficient copper oxide photovoltaic devices.
Copper oxide is an attractive candidate for low-cost solar cells, but identifying the correct material dimensions through physical experimentation alone is costly and slow. Using computational simulations to map out optimal layer thicknesses, bandgaps, and carrier densities provides clear benchmarks that allow researchers to streamline fabrication and improve solar energy conversion.
The findings provide precise structural targets for photovoltaic engineers and device manufacturers developing copper oxide solar cells. As this is an early-stage numerical simulation study, it remains distant from commercial deployment. Translating these results into viable products will require experimental validation and physical device fabrication to confirm that the predicted eight percent efficiency levels can be realised.
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There is no clear data about the optimum thicknesses, band gaps, and charge densities of Cu2O thin films to fabricate solar cells. Therefore, here, Solar Cell Capacitance Simulator (SCAPS) program was employed to simulate the Cu2O nanostructures solar cells. Effect of window layer thickness, absorber layer thickness, bandgap, and carrier concentration on basic parameters of Cu2O solar cells were studied. Results revealed that window layer thickness in range from 0.3 to 0.4 µm is optimum to produce a higher performance of about 6.5%. Bandgap should be greater than 2.1 eV and donor carrier concentration under 1×1016 cm-3 are required to improve solar cell efficiency of about 8%. Built-in potential, width of the depletion layer, collection length of charge carrier, lifetime of minority carrier, and recombination rate are the main factors directing performance of devices. Consequently, employing our results to fabricate Cu2O solar cells is a step forward to improve efficiencies.
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DOI: 10.1080/10667857.2020.1793092
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