Optical and Electrical Analysis of Core-Shell ZnO/ZnTe Micropillar Solar Cells

Abstract

This paper presents an investigation on the effects of micropillar physical parameters (height, pitch and diameter) on the optical and electrical performance of ZnO/ZnTe core-shell micropillar solar cells. It also studies the effect of the doping level in the absorber layer on the device s performance considering the impact of Auger s recombination. A Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) solver, Lumerical, is used for the numerical analysis. Based on the range of parameters analyzed it was concluded that for a core-shell ZnO/ZnTe micropillar solar cell a 4 um height, a 0.5 um pitch, a 70 nm ZnTe shell thickness and a 2.16 x 1019 cm-3 doping concentration for ZnTe achieves an efficiency of 17%.