Issue 11, 2023

Surface plasmon enhanced ultrathin Cu2ZnSnS4/crystalline-Si tandem solar cells

Abstract

Thin-film silicon solar cells have sparked a great deal of research interest because of their low material usage and cost-effective processing. Despite the potential benefits, thin-film silicon solar cells have low power-conversion efficiency, which limits their commercial usage and mass production. To solve this problem, we design an ultrathin dual junction tandem solar cell with Cu2ZnSnS4 (CZTS) and crystalline silicon (c-Si) as the main absorbing layer for the top and bottom cells, respectively, through optoelectronic simulation. To enhance light absorption in thin-film crystalline silicon, we use silver nanoparticles at the rear end of the bottom cell. We utilize amorphous Si with a c-Si heterojunction to boost the carrier collection efficiency. Computational analyses show that within 9 μm thin-film c-Si, we achieve 28.28% power conversion efficiency with a 220 nm top CZTS layer. These findings will help reduce the amount of Si (∼10 vs. ∼180 μm) in silicon-based solar cells while maintaining high power conversion efficiency.

Graphical abstract: Surface plasmon enhanced ultrathin Cu2ZnSnS4/crystalline-Si tandem solar cells

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
20 Nov 2022
Accepted
11 Apr 2023
First published
12 Apr 2023
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Nanoscale Adv., 2023,5, 2887-2896

Surface plasmon enhanced ultrathin Cu2ZnSnS4/crystalline-Si tandem solar cells

S. Jamil, U. Saha and Md. K. Alam, Nanoscale Adv., 2023, 5, 2887 DOI: 10.1039/D2NA00826B

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