Modeling and Simulation of Tin Sulfide (SnS)-Based Solar Cell Using ZnO as Transparent Conductive Oxide (TCO) and NiO as Hole Transport Layer (HTL)

Ahmad Umar; Pooja Tiwari; Sadanand; Vaibhava Srivastava; Pooja Lohia; Dilip Kumar Dwivedi; Hussam Qasem; Sheikh Akbar; Hassan Algadi; Sotirios Baskoutas

doi:10.3390/mi13122073

Modeling and Simulation of Tin Sulfide (SnS)-Based Solar Cell Using ZnO as Transparent Conductive Oxide (TCO) and NiO as Hole Transport Layer (HTL)

Micromachines (Basel). 2022 Nov 25;13(12):2073. doi: 10.3390/mi13122073.

Authors

Ahmad Umar^{1

2}, Pooja Tiwari³, Sadanand⁴, Vaibhava Srivastava³, Pooja Lohia³, Dilip Kumar Dwivedi⁵, Hussam Qasem⁶, Sheikh Akbar⁷, Hassan Algadi⁷, Sotirios Baskoutas⁸

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, College of Science and Arts, Promising Centre for Sensors and Electronic Devices (PCSED), Najran University, Najran 11001, Saudi Arabia.
² Department of Materials Science and Engineering, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA.
³ Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Madan Mohan Malviya University of Technology, Gorakhpur 273010, India.
⁴ Department of Applied Sciences, Galgotias College of Engineering and Technology, Greater Noida 201306, India.
⁵ Photonics and Photovoltaic Research Lab, Department of Physics and Material Science, Madan Mohan Malviya University of Technology, Gorakhpur 273010, India.
⁶ National Centre for Renewable Energy, King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), Riyadh 11442, Saudi Arabia.
⁷ Department of Electrical Engineering, College of Engineering, Najran University, Najran 11001, Saudi Arabia.
⁸ Department of Materials Science, University of Patras, 26500 Patras, Greece.

Abstract

This paper describes the simulation by Solar Cell Capacitance Simulator-1D (SCAPS-1D) software of ZnO/CdS/SnS/NiO/Au solar cells, in which zinc oxide (ZnO) is used as transparent conductive oxide (TCO) and nickel oxide (NiO) is used as a hole transport layer (HTL). The effects of absorber layer (SnS) thickness, carrier concentration, SnS defect density, NiO HTL, ZnO TCO, electron affinity and work function on cell performance have been evaluated. The effect of interface defect density of SnS/CdS on the performance of the heterojunction solar cell is also analysed. As the results indicate, a maximum power conversion efficiency of 26.92% was obtained.

Keywords: CdS; SnS; heterojunction solar cell.

Grants and funding

The authors are thankful to the Deanship of Scientific Research at Najran University, Najran, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, for funding this work under the Research Group Funding Program grant NU/RG/SERC/11/1.