Author/Authors :
Hossain, M.S. Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia - Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment - Department of Electrical, Electronic Systems Engineering, Malaysia , Amin, N. Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia - Solar Energy Research Institute, Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment - Department of Electrical, Electronic Systems Engineering, Malaysia , Amin, N. King Saud University - Center of Excellence for Research in Engineering Materials (CEREM), College of Engineering, Saudi Arabia , Aliyu, M.M. Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia - Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment - Department of Electrical, Electronic Systems Engineering, Malaysia , Matin, M.A. Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia - Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment - Department of Electrical, Electronic Systems Engineering, Malaysia , Razykov, T. Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia - Solar Energy Research Institute, Malaysia , Karim, M.R. King Saud University - Center of Excellence for Research in Engineering Materials (CEREM), College of Engineering, Saudi Arabia , Sopian, K. Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia - Solar Energy Research Institiute, Malaysia
Abstract :
A numerical analysis was executed utilizing Analysis of Microelectronic and Photonic Structures (AMPS 1D) simulator to explore the possibility of higher efficiency and stable ZnxCd1-xS/CdTe cells among several cell structures with indium tin oxide (ITO) and cadmium stannate (Cd2SnO4) as front contact, zinc stannate (Zn2SnO4) and zinc oxide (ZnO) insertion as buffer layer and antimony telluride (Sb2Te3) insertion with Nickle (Ni) as back contact was conducted in the conventional (SnO2/CdS/CdTe/Ag) CdTe cell structures in which CdS is replaced by zinc cadmium sulphide (ZnxCd1-xS) as window layer. Efficiency as high as 18.0% has been found with 80 nm of ZnxCd1-xS window layer for x=0.05, 1 μm of CdTe layer and 100 nm Zn2SnO4 buffer layer without Sb2Te3 back contact. However, ZnO insertion shows low conversion efficiency of 7.84% and 12.26%, respectively with and without Sb2Te3 back contact. Moreover, it was found that the cell normalized efficiency linearly decreases with the increasing operating temperature at the temperature gradient of -0.25%/°C.
Keywords :
Zn2SnO4 , buffer layer , ZnxCd1 , xS , AMPS1D
