Simulation of the Efficiency of CdS/CdTe Tandem Multi-Junction Solar Cells

TL;DR

This study uses numerical simulations to optimize the layer thicknesses of CdS/CdTe solar cells, achieving an efficiency of 18.3% for single-junction and 31.8% for a novel tandem multi-junction design.

Contribution

It introduces a new tandem multi-junction CdS/CdTe solar cell structure optimized through simulation for higher efficiency.

Findings

Single-junction efficiency reaches 18.3% with specific layer thicknesses.

Tandem multi-junction design achieves 31.8% efficiency.

Layer thickness optimization is crucial for maximizing solar cell performance.

Abstract

In this paper we study CdS/CdTe solar cells by means of AMPS-1D software. First we study the effect of thickness of semiconductor layers on the output parameters of the CdS/CdTe solar cell, such as density of short-circuit current, open circuit voltage, fill factor and efficiency. Numerical simulation shows that the highest efficiency of single-junction CdS/CdTe solar cell equal to 18.3% is achieved when the CdTe layer thickness is 1000 nm and a CdS layer is 60 nm. Then, in order to obtain the maximal value of the efficiency, new tandem multi-junction structure consisting of layers of two solar cells connected with each other back to back are designed and engineered taking into account the results obtained for the single-junction solar cells. Numerical simulations show that its highest efficiency in 31.8% can be obtained when the thickness of CdS p-layer is equal to 50 nm, and the thickness of the CdS n-layer is equal to 200 nm, while thicknesses of the CdTe n-layer and CdTe p-layer are kept fixed and equal to 3000 nm and 1000 nm, respectively.