Impact of Bulk and Interface Recombination on Wide-Bandgap CGS Solar Cells: Numerical Analysis of CdS and ZTO Buffer Layers
Simulations were conducted to investigate the effects of bulk and interface recombination on the photovoltaic performance of a wide-bandgap CuGaSe<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">₂</inf> (CGS) solar cell featuring a standard n-side stack of ZnO:Al/i-ZnO/CdS. The impact of replacing the CdS buffer layer with Zn<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">1−x</inf>Sn<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">x</inf>O (ZTO) was tested for two different Sn compositions, revealing that the optimal composition is Zn<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">0.8</inf>Sn<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">0.2</inf>O. The performance of CGS solar cells employing the alternative ZTO buffer layer was found to improve compared to that of cells utilizing the traditional CdS buffer layer, under identical conditions of bulk carrier lifetimes in CGS and recombination rates at the buffer/absorber interface.
Authors
- Lorenzo Perini (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4522-8821)
- Giovanna Sozzi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4884-2843)
- Enrico Moisè
Institutions
- University of Parma (IT)
- Institute of Materials for Electronics and Magnetism (IT)
Publication Details
- Published
- 2025-06-08
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1109/pvsc59419.2025.11132924
- Primary Topic
- Chalcogenide Semiconductor Thin Films
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00