Insight of ZnO/CuO and ZnO/Cu2O solar cells efficiency with SCAPS simulator

Despite the low power conversion efficiency of solar cells n-ZnO/p-CuO and n-ZnO/p-Cu 2 O, they can contribute to the development of photovoltaic energy. To optimize their yields, the simulator software SCAPS-1D was used in this work to do the simulations of the two cells (Fig. 1) by varying certain parameters. Its parameters were thickness, bandgap, shallow uniform donor density (ND) for the ZnO, and shallow uniform acceptor density (NA) for the CuO and Cu 2 O. The values optimized of these parameters gave short-circuit currents and efficiencies of 27.7755 mA.cm −2 , 31.40%, and 12.9790 mA.cm −2 , 13.34% respectively for the solar cells n-ZnO/p-CuO and n-ZnO/p-Cu 2 O (Fig. 2). Our results reveal that the n-ZnO/p-CuO solar cell is more efficient than the n-ZnO/p-Cu 2 O solar cell and can be used for converting solar energy into electricity. Graphical abstract