Germanium Telluride Absorber Layer, A proposal for Low Illumination Photovoltaic Application Using AMPS 1D

Working under low illumination condition has always been a challenging demand for photovoltaic technology. In this regard, a new promising solar cell with Germanium Telluride (GeTe), as an absorber layer, is proposed using numerical technique focusing on low illumination application. The cell structure (ZnO:Al/CdS/GeTe) consists of widely used front contact, ZnO:Al and window layer, CdS. The solar cell characteristics have been investigated in terms of the GeTe absorber layer thickness, the carrier concentration, and the light intensity and achieved ≈ 17.4% of conversion efficiency under 1.0 sun which remains unchanged until the light intensity of 0.05 suns. The simulated results showed that the optimum thickness for the GeTe layer is only 2 µm with the acceptor concentration of 7.5×10
¹⁸
cm
⁻³
(with J
SC
= 21.65 mAcm
⁻²
, V
OC
= 1.09 V, and FF = 0.81).The excellent cell characteristics achieved at low illumination indicates that GeTe could be the promising materials for the high-efficiency solar cell for indoor use and/or for using in low illumination condition.