High performance and stable molybdenum telluride PV cells with Indium Telluride BSF

Molybdenum telluride (MoTe
₂
) is a very promising candidate as PV cell for better cell stability and performance. In this research work, AMPS (Analysis of Microelectronic and Photonic Structures) simulator was used to examine the performance parameters (Jsc, Voc, FF and conversion efficiency) of ultra-thin MoTe
₂
PV cell through numerical analysis. During the study, it was found that absorber layer thickness of MoTe
₂
PV cell is adequate to achieve cell efficiency at satisfactory level. In addition, the hidden potentiality of MoTe
₂
PV cell was examined by inserting Indium Telluride (ImTe
₃
) back surface field (BSF) between absorber layer and back contact metal. The conversion efficiency of 17.06% (FF = 0.730, V
_oc
= 0.98 V and J
_sc
= 23.74 mA/cm
²
) has been achieved for 1 μm absorber layer of MoTe
₂
PV cell without BSF, whereas higher conversion efficiency is 25.29% (FF = 0.847, V
_oc
= 1.08 V and Jsc = 27.60 mA/cm
²
) achieved at room temperature with only 0.7 μm of MoTe
₂
absorber layer along with 100 nm In
₂
Te
₃
BSF. This research work compares the thermal stability of the structure of MoTe2 PV cell with and without BSF. It was found that the normalized efficiency decreased in response of increasing the operating temperature at the gradient of -0.0275%/°C without BSF. For the addition of In
₂
Te
₃
BSF in the proposed MoTe
₂
PV cell, the degradation of normalized efficiency was too less in the range of higher operating temperature.