Unveiling the potential of direct synthesized PbS CQD ink based solar cells through numerical simulation

Studies on lead sulfide-PbS quantum dot-QD based solar cells have gained considerable attention in recent years. A direct synthesis-DS method has emerged that makes it possible to obtain PbS ink in a single step by eliminating complex synthesis and ligand exchange processes, thus reducing the production cost and time. However, the limited number of studies on cells obtained with this method obscures the high potential of this technique. In this study, various electron-ETL and hole transport layers-HTL were systematically brought together in the SCAPS-1D environment to determine the architecture of the cell with record performance. A photoconversion efficiency-PCE of over 20% was achieved with a cell in which n-type DS PbS inks were combined with TiO₂ ETL and MoO₃ HTL. Moreover, we found that p-type DS PbS inks have a much higher potential than n-type inks, with a PCE of up to 36%, and most importantly, they are more resistant to increased defect density. We believe that this study, in which the device architecture for DS PbS inks was optimized and structured for the first time and the importance of p-type DS PbS inks was emphasized, will shed light on future studies in the field of solar cell technologies.