Simulation study to find suitable dopants of CdS buffer layer for CZTS solar cell

Abstract

The performance of CZTS solar cell, a promising candidate in the field of energy production from sunlight, can be improved by optimizing the parameters of most widely used CdS buffer layer. In this work, numerical study have been done on the typical CZTS solar cell structures containing Mo thin film as back contact on glass substrate using SCAPS-1D solar cell simulation software. Then, the CZTS has been used as the absorber layer followed by CdS buffer later. Following, ZnO and transparent conducting oxide n-ITO layers have been considered as window layer and front contact, respectively. In the simulations, the CdS buffer layer has been doped with three different materials such as Silver (Ag), Copper (Cu) and Chlorine (Cl) for a wide acceptable range of carrier concentration. After obtaining the suitable carrier concentration, the thickness of the doped buffer layer has been varied keeping other layer parameters constant to see the variation of performance parameters open circuit voltage (Voc), short circuit current density (Jsc), fill factor (FF) and efficiency (η) of the CZTS solar cell.