Investigation of All-Oxide Thin-Film Solar Cell With p-SnOₓ as Absorber Layer

We propose an n-ZnO/p-SnO
_x
heterojunction solar cell as a novel pathway to realize all-oxide photovoltaics that offer attractive features such as stability, cost-effectiveness, and nontoxicity. TCAD device simulator was used to investigate the performance of n-ZnO/p-SnO
_x
thin-film solar cell using inputs on material parameters of SnO
_x
obtained experimentally. In this study, we considered the effects of SnO
_x
parameters, namely, bandgap and electron affinity on the performance of solar cell. Electrical transport models applied in modeling include the effects of interfacial recombination, tunneling, band discontinuity, and minority carrier lifetime. Our simulation results show that a maximum power conversion efficiency of ~15.5% can be obtained in a window of an optimum combination of bandgap and electron affinity of SnO
_x
layer. Further enhancement in efficiency is achievable by improving the minority carrier lifetime.