Impact of electrical and optical parameters on performance of CdTe solar cell with a-Si as a hole transport layer

Currently Cadmium Telluride (CdTe) is a promising and potential absorber material to use in solar cell due to reliable cost and highly efficient solar cell. In this work, amorphous silicon (a-Si) as hole transport layer (HTL) has been introduced in the middle of CdTe absorber and back contact to design the solar cell. Various parameters of materials are varied to enhance the performance of the CdTe absorber-based solar cell using SCAPS-1D. We have studied impact of thickness, defect density of CdTe, surface recombination velocity at CdTe absorber/HTL interface and acceptor concentration of CdTe on performance of solar cell. Some factors such as shunt resistance ( R sh ) and series resistance ( R s ) and work function of metal contacts has also been investigated. The highest power conversion efficiency (PCE) 27.98% is achieved with open circuit voltage ( V oc ) of 1.12 V, short circuit current density ( J sc ) of 29.04 mA/cm 2 and fill factor (FF) of 85.85% at the thickness of 2000 nm. This work shows that the proposed CdTe solar cell with a-Si HTL provides better performance as compare to conventional CdTe solar cell.