Enhancement of CuO/Si Solar Cell Efficiency by Cu₂O Doping Prepared Via Thermal Evaporation Technique

CuO:Cu 2 O/Si heterojunctions have been prepared with different concentrations of Cu 2 O nanoparticles using the thermal evaporation technique. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) results show that the prepared films are polycrystalline with orthorhombic structure and preferential orientation (110) direction along the [Formula: see text] axis at [Formula: see text], which corresponds to the pure CuO with crystallite size 18[Formula: see text]nm, while the particle size ranged from 14[Formula: see text]nm to 34 nm (resulted from SEM test). The optical properties were studied by recording the absorbance spectra using the UV–visible spectrophotometer. The absorbance increased with Cu 2 O doping. The high values of the energy gap refer to the quantization effect. The electrical properties including the Hall effect were studied. CuO:Cu 2 O/Si heterojunctions have been prepared at different concentrations. [Formula: see text]–[Formula: see text] characteristics show that the Cu 2 O doping increases the energy conversion efficiency by retarding the electron–hole recombination and the improved device performance is caused by the high short-circuit current ([Formula: see text] and open circuit voltage ([Formula: see text] and found that the highest efficiency ([Formula: see text] at doping 0.006 Cu 2 O 3.471% with [Formula: see text] of 2.20[Formula: see text]V, [Formula: see text] of 0.0170[Formula: see text]mA cm[Formula: see text] and F.F of 0.6497 at [Formula: see text][Formula: see text]mW/cm 2 .