Researchers establish new perovskite solar cell design with 31.09% effectiveness

• Researchers from the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and also Astronautics in China as well as University of Okara in Pakistan have substitute a solar cell based on an absorber making use of a CsSnI3 perovskite product, which is an inorganic perovskite that has low exciton binding energy, a high absorbance coefficient, and an energy bandgap of 1.3 eV.

The researchers utilized the SCAPS-1D solar cell capacitance software program, which is a simulation device for thin-film solar cells developed by the University of Ghent in Belgium, to simulate numerous cell layouts with different electron transport layers (ETLs) as well as hole transport layers (HTLs). With a series of simulations, the team located that the best possible cell setup was supplied by a tool based on a substrate constructed from fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO), a titanium oxide (TiO2) ETL, the CsSnI3 absorber, an HTL based upon nickel(II) oxide (NiOx), and also back electrodes.

The team explained that the perovskite CsSnI3 thickness of 1,250 nm was found optimum for obtaining the greatest performance with each ETL as well as HTL thickness of about 50 nm. The absorber layer with around 1200 − 1300 nm thickness, TiO2, and NiO with 50 nm thicknesses are considered beneficial to acquire high PV performance.

The best-performing tool built with this design achieved a performance of 31.09%, an open-circuit voltage of 1.084 V, a short-circuit current of 31.17 mA/cm2, and also a fill factor of 88.68%. The scientists stated the performance depended generally on the absorber thickness, the perovskite material's energy bandgap, the acceptor level thickness, and the cell's central trap power levels.