Optimisation of AgInSe₂ based thin-film solar cells using COMSOL Multiphysics

Le résumé fourni par la source

The efficiency of silicon (Si) solar cells has been the topic of major interest around the world owing to the fact that they account for 90% of the commercially available solar cells. Therefore, to make it cost effective, alterations to the device’s structure by adding AgInSe2 (AIS) has been found to be beneficial. Consequently, this study aims to understand the effect that AIS has on the photovoltaic performance of various solar cells. In this study COMSOL Multiphysics was used to numerically compare the effects of changing the thickness, carrier concentration, electron affinity and bandgap of the AIS layer in p-Si/n-AIS and p- In2S3/n-AIS structures. It was shown that increasing the thickness and carrier concentration of the AIS layer increased the power conversion efficiency (PCE) in both devices. The overall effect of the AIS layer was an increase in the PCE for both devices peaking at 6.77% for the p-Si/n-AIS structure and 8.84% for the p- In2S3/n-AIS structure. In addition, the internal heating of the devices such as the nonradiative recombination heating and Joule heating was also analysed to better understand how thermal energy is generated within the cell. The results of this study can therefore be used to inform and guide the development of AIS based solar cell device structures to achieve the highest possible efficiency.

Ce résumé expose les affirmations des auteurs. BNTIC ne l’interprète pas comme une validation indépendante des résultats.