Numerical simulation on electrical characteristics of high efficiency PPN homojunction InGaN photovoltaic solar cell

Solar cells based on InGaN semiconducting materials are gaining increasing interest in recent times due to their wide bandgap range of 0.65–3.42 eV for optical absorption in the large portion of the solar spectrum. This study performs a numerical simulation using SCAPS-1D program to investigate the influence of layer thickness and carrier concentration on the electrical parameters of p-In0.35Ga0.65N/p-In0.75Ga0.25N/n-In0.6Ga0.4N (PPN) InGaN homojunction solar cell. The optimized PPN structure demonstrated high power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 33.93 % at 300 K compared to its PN (20.44 %) due to the presence of a thin (0.01 μm) top p-layer, which mitigated surface recombination and boosted charge collection. The VOC, JSC and FF of the optimized PPN were found to be 0.94 V, 42.79 mA/cm2, and 84.60 %, respectively. The PCE of the optimized PN and PPN device decreased as (33.93–21.97 %) and (26.46–7.51 %), respectively, with rising temperature (250–500 K). The PPN structure delivered satisfactory performance all temperatures, making it suitable even for elevated temperature applications. The PCE of the PPN device under standard ambient conditions agrees with the Shockley-Queisser efficiency limit for single-junction solar cells.