Effect of Cu2O hole transport layer and improved minority carrier life time on the efficiency enhancement of Cu2NiSnS4 based experimental solar cell

Cu2NiSnS4 is a non-toxic earth abundant material and a promising quaternary semiconductor compound. Due to its optimum direct band gap, it has been considered as a suitable absorber material for photovoltaic cells. It is a conspicuous and suitable class of material for the fabrication of low cost and high efficiency thin film devices. This paper presents numerical modeling for the efficiency enhancement of Cu2NiSnS4 based experimental photovoltaic cells. In this work, the experimental cell results were reproduced in the SCAPS software. These simulated results are validated and compared with the experimental reference cell. Cu2O as the hole transport layer is also proposed for further efficiency enhancement of the photovoltaic cell. After optimization of cell parameters, the power conversion efficiency of an optimized device is increased up to 4.60%. By applying the hole transport layer and analyzing the minority carrier life time, the conversion efficiency increases up to 10.35%. This work presents a novel concept in numerical modeling by analyzing the experimental solar cell, which will categorically offer new directions for the fabrication of high efficiency photovoltaic devices. Published by AIP Publishing.