Simulation and optimization of 30.17% high performance N-type TCO-free inverted perovskite solar cell using inorganic transport materials

Abstract

Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have gained much attention in recent years because of their improved energy conversion efficiency, simple fabrication process, low processing temperature, flexibility, light weight, and low cost of constituent materials when compared with their counterpart silicon based solar cells. Besides, stability and toxicity of PSCs and low power conversion efficiency have been an obstacle towards commercialization of PSCs which has attracted intense research attention. In this research paper, a Glass/Cu₂O/CH₃NH₃SnI₃/ZnO/Al inverted device structure which is made of cheap inorganic materials, n-type transparent conducting oxide (TCO)-free, stable, photoexcited toxic-free perovskite have been carefully designed, simulated and optimized using a one-dimensional solar cell capacitance simulator (SCAPS-1D) software. The effects of layers' thickness, perovskite's doping concentration and back contact electrodes have been investigated, and the optimized structure produced an open circuit voltage (V_oc) of 1.0867 V, short circuit current density (J_SC) of 33.4942 mA/cm², fill factor (FF) of 82.88% and power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 30.17%. This paper presents a model that is first of its kind where the highest PCE performance and eco-friendly n-type TCO-free inverted CH₃NH₃SnI₃ based perovskite solar cell is achieved using all-inorganic transport materials.