Improving the performance of cadmium telluride solar cell (CdTe) with different buffer layers

Abstract

In this paper, the performance of the buffer layer of Cadmium Telluride (CdTe) thin film solar cell was optimized using SCAPS software. At first, five different buffer layers including CdS, In2S3, ZnO, ZnSe and ZnS with variable thicknesses from 10 to 100 nm have been replaced in the structure of the solar cell and it has been observed. As the thickness of the buffer layer is increased, the efficiency decreases.Due to the increase of thickness light absorption in the structure is increased and less light is absobed in CdTe layer. The reason behinf this incident is described physically. Then the performance of the solar cell with different buffer layers is compared, and the effect of each of the layers on the four main parameters of the solar cell has been investigated. Simulation results show that the ZnS buffer layer has a higher efficiency in all thicknesses than other materials which originates from the fact that the bandgap of this material is bigger than other materials.

Keywords

• solar cell
• thin film
• Buffer layer
• band gap
• absorbing layer