Numerical Simulation and Performance Evaluation of Highly Efficient Sb2Se3 Solar Cell with Tin Sulfide as Hole Transport Layer

This work reports a numerical investigation on the performance of Sb2Se3-based thin-film heterojunction solar cell using the solar cell capacitance simulator in 1D (SCAPS-1D) program. Herein, inorganic tin sulfide (SnS) is introduced as a new hole transport material into the Sb2Se3 solar cell. The effects of several parameters such as thickness, doping, electron affinity, defect density, temperature, and resistances on the cell performances are analyzed. The proposed novel solar configuration that consists of Al/F:SnO2 (FTO)/CdS/Sb2Se3/SnS/Mo reveals the enhanced photovoltaic performances by means of reducing carrier recombination loss at back surface. At an optimized Sb2Se3 thickness of 1.0 mu m, the efficiency is boosted from 24.01% to 29.89% by incorporating an ultrathin 0.05 mu m SnS hole transport layer (HTL) into the Sb2Se3 solar cell. The performances of the proposed device are also evaluated by varying defects at CdS/Sb2Se3 and Sb2Se3/SnS interfaces. Moreover, it is found that electron affinity larger than 3.5 eV of HTL as well as back contact metal work function >= 4.9 eV should be considered to attain better performance. The simulated results lead to suggest that introducing the SnS material as a potential HTL candidate would be useful to develop low-cost and highly efficient thin-film solar cells.