Author(s)

Adama Sylla¹, Siaka Touré¹, Jean-Pierre Vilcot²

¹Laboratoire d’Energie Solaire, Université Félix Houphouët Boigny, Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire.
²Institut d’Electronique, de Microélectronique et de Nanotechnologie (IEMN), UMR, CNRS, 8520. Laboratoire Central, Villeneuve d’Ascq Cedex, Lille, France.

Usually a buffer layer of cadmium sulphide is used in high efficiency solar cells based on Cu(In,Ga)Se₂(CIGS). Because of cadmium toxicity, many in-vestigations have been conducted to use Cd-free buffer layers. Our work focuses on this type of CIGS-based solar cells where CdS is replaced by a ZnS buffer layer. In this contribution, AFORS-HET software is used to simulate n-ZnO: Al/i-ZnO/n-ZnS/p-CIGS/Mo polycrystalline thin-film solar cell where the key parts are p-CIGS absorber layer and n-ZnS buffer layer. The characteristics of these key parts: thickness and Ga-content of the absorber layer, thickness of the buffer layer and doping concentrations of absorber and buffer layers have been investigated to optimize the conversion efficiency. We find a maximum conversion efficiency of 26% with a short-circuit current of 36.9 mA/cm², an open circuit voltage of 824 mV, and a fill factor of 85.5%.

Cu(In_1-xGa_x)Se₂, Thin-Film Solar Cell, Numerical Modeling, AFORS-HET Simulation, Optimization

Sylla, A. , Touré, S. and Vilcot, J. (2017) Numerical Modeling and Simulation of CIGS-Based Solar Cells with ZnS Buffer Layer. Open Journal of Modelling and Simulation, 5, 218-231. doi: 10.4236/ojmsi.2017.54016.