All-oxide n-AZO/p-SnOx hetero-junction for flexible solar cells: A numerical approach v1

Researcher needs to explore some metal oxide semiconductors based solar cells which would help to escape the indispensableness of Si-wafer as well as to cut down the overall cost of PV module production by a large margin. Owing to the low processing temperature and easily tunable electrical and optical properties of metal oxides, SnOx in particular , n-AZO/p-SnOx hetero-junction thin film solar cell have been proposed. In this paper, an all-oxide n-AZO/p-SnOx hetero-junction thin film solar cell hasbeen proposed to make a pathway for a thin film flexible solar cell. Based on some experimental parameter values of SnOx as light absorber layer, detail numerical analysis of the thin film solar cell has been carried out using TCAD device simulator. Oxygen dependent SnOx parameters like band gap, electron affinity, extinction coefficient and hetero-interface defect along with bulk defect have been considered in the analysis. Moreover, electron affinity, band gap and absorption coefficient significantly change with oxygen mole fraction (x) of SnOx and thus electrical and optical properties of SnOx are tunable to some extent. Owing to the low processing temperature and easily tunable electrical and optical properties of metal oxides, SnOx in particular , Results Effect of bulk and interface defect along with the other heterointerface phenomenon on the carrier transport and hence, overall performance of the device is considered in this study. In continuation to above, the effect of band offset between AZO and SnOx layer has been also detailed out in this work. Further, spectral response of AZO/SnOx hetero-junction solar cell has been also extracted for different thicknesses of SnOx absorber layer Our simulation results shows that a maximum Voc of 0.9V and Jsc of ~16 mA/cm2 can be obtained by tuning the bandgap and electron affinity of SnOx layer.