Effect of MoS2 as a Buffer Layer on CdTe Photovoltaic Cell through Numerical Simulation

Abstract

A thin film based Cadmium Telluride photovoltaic cell is becoming highly competitive in the electric power industry. The major problem with the CdTe photovoltaic cell is the large barrier height behind the rear contact surface that prevents the solar cell to reach notional efficiency of 32%. A buffer layer is added to get a better result in terms of efficiency by reducing the valence barrier height at the rear contact surface of the CdTe photovoltaic cell. This manuscript presents the numerical simulation and optimization of ITO/TiO₂/CdS/CdTe/MoS₂/Au original photovoltaic cell structure using SCAPS 1D software. Furthermore, the effect of CdTe thickness, CdS thickness, defect density, and acceptor density of MoS₂ layer is discussed. Simulation results show that with the optimization of layer and parameters of the photovoltaic cell, efficacy of the photovoltaic cell is quite improved. With optimized solar cell, efficiency is improved to 26.49%, V_oc = 1.141 V, J_sc = 27.690 mA/cm², FF = 83.80% as compared to basic CdTe model which has an efficiency of 21.69%.