Electron Affinity and Bandgap Optimization of Zinc Oxide for Improved Performance of ZnO/Si Heterojunction Solar Cell Using PC1D Simulations

For further uptake in the solar cell industry, n-ZnO/p-Si single heterojunction solar cell has attracted much attention of the research community in recent years. This paper reports the influence of bandgap and/or electron affinity tuning of zinc oxide on the performance of n-ZnO/p-Si single heterojunction photovoltaic cell using PC1D simulations. The simulation results reveal that the open circuit voltage and fill factor can be improved significantly by optimizing valence-band and conduction-band off-sets by engineering the bandgap and electron affinity of zinc oxide. An overall conversion efficiency of more than 20.3% can be achieved without additional cost or any change in device structure. It has been found that the improvement in efficiency is mainly due to reduction in conduction band offset that has a significant influence on minority carrier current.