The Effect of Change the Thickness on CdS/CdTe Tandem Multi-Junction Solar Cells Efficiency

Document Type : Articles

Authors

• Ashrafalsadat Mirkamali ¹
• Khikmatkhalimovich Muminov ²

¹ Department of Science and Engineering, Behshahr Branch, Islamic Azad University, Behshahr, Iran

² Physical-Technical Institute named after S.U.umarov, academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tajikistan, Dushanbe, Tajikistan.

Abstract

 Researchers in the field of simulation have been mainly interested in the question of how to increase the efficiency of solar cells. Therefore this study aimed to investigate CdS/CdTe solar cells by applying AMPS-1D software. The impact of semiconductor layers thickness on the output parameters of the CdS/CdTe solar cell is being analyzed and studied carefully, for example, fill factor, efficiency, the density of short-circuit current and open circuit voltage. To acquire the most efficiency estimation, a new tandem multi-junction structure is intended by using two solar cells connected back to back with each other and designed based on the results gained from the single-junction solar cells. Numerical simulations demonstrated that the highest CdS/CdTe efficiency is 31.8% which can be achieved whenever the p-CdS layer thickness is equal to 50 nm, and the n-CdS layer thickness is equal to 200 nm, while the thicknesses of the n-CdTe layer and p-CdTe layer are kept fixed equal to 3000 nm and 1000 nm, respectively

Keywords

• tandem solar cell
• Efficiency
• Thickness
• optimum
• Simulation

20.1001.1.24237361.2017.2.3.2.0

---

References

[1] Wu. Xuanzhi, High-efficiency polycrystalline CdTe thin-film solar cells, Solar Energy, 77 (2004) 803–814.

[2] A. Nowshad, Y. Akira, K. Makoto, Effect of ZnTe and CdZnTe alloys at the Back Contact of 1-μm Thick CdTe Thin Film Solar Cells, Japanese journal of applied physics, 41.( 2002) 2834-2840.

[3] H. Sharafat, A. Nowshad, M. A. Matin, A numerical study on the prospects of high efficiency ultra thin ZnxCd1-xS/CdTe solar cell, Chalcogenide Letters, 8 (3) (2011) 263 – 272.

[4] A. Romeo, A.N. Tiwari, H. Zogg, Proceedings of the 2nd World Conference and Exhibition on Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conversion, Vienna,Austria, (1998) 1105-1108.

[5] C. Ferekides, J. Ma Y. Britt, L. Killian, High efficiency CdTe solar cells by close spaced sublimation, Proceedings of the 23rd IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, 1993.-New York, USA. 389 –393.

[6] http://www.pveducation.org/pvcdrom/solar-cell-operation/tandem-cells

[7] A. L. Fahrenbruch, R. H. Bube, Fundamentals of Solar Cells Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conversion, Fahrenbruch,A.- New York.- Academic Press,1983.

[8] P. Würfel, Physics of solar cells: From principles to new concepts, Wiley-VCH, 2005.

[9] J. F. Stephen, Solar cell device physics, 2nd edition.- USA. Elsevier, 2010.

[10] YJ.S. Tyan, E.A. Perez-Albuerne, Efficient thin film CdS/CdTe solar cells, Proceedings of 16th IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, IEEE Publishing, New York, (1982) 794.

[11] C. Ferekides, J. Britt, Y. Ma, L. Killian, High efficiency CdTe solar cells by close spaced sublimation, Proceedings of Twenty- Third-Photovoltaic-Specialists-Conference IEEE, New York, USA, (1993) 389.

[12] Wu Xuanzhi, High-efficiency polycrystalline CdTe thin-film solar cells, Solar Energy, 77 (2004) 803–814.

[13] HC. Chou, A. Rohatgi, NM Jokerst, EW. Thomas, S. Kamra. Copper Migration in CdTe Heterojunction Solar Cells. J. Electr. Mater. 25(7) (1996) 1093–1098.