Modelling and Simulation of of high efficiency GaAs PIN-Solar Cell

TL;DR

This paper models a GaAs PIN solar cell to analyze how parameters like carrier mobility, lifetime, and surface recombination velocity affect its efficiency, achieving maximum efficiencies around 11-14%.

Contribution

It presents a detailed simulation model of a GaAs PIN solar cell, exploring the impact of various parameters on efficiency, which is a novel approach for optimizing high-efficiency photovoltaic devices.

Findings

Maximum efficiency of 13.75% achieved at specific surface recombination velocity.

Higher carrier mobility and lifetime increase solar cell efficiency.

Efficiency can be optimized by reducing surface recombination velocities.

Abstract

Solar energy is the most convenient and reliable energy source among all renewable energy resources and an efficient photovoltaic device is required to convert this energy into utilizable energy. Different types of solar cells (SC) are commercially available. However, various parameters need to be optimized to get maximum efficiency from a SC. In this study we have presented a SC model in which dependence of quantum efficiency (QE) on various parameters has been investigated. The mobility of the carriers has been varied with wide range along with the carrier life time (LT). Results show that maximum efficiencies can be achieved up to 11.10% and 10.81% keeping the electron and hole mobility to be 1500 cm2V-1s-1 and 300 cm2V-1s-1 respectively with electron and hole carrier LT to be 3ns and 7ns respectively. The effect of surface recombination velocity (SRV) has also been brought under observation and the maximum efficiency is found to be 13.75% at electron and hole SRV equal to be 103ms-1. Results shows that the higher photovoltaic efficiencies can be achieved by increasing the mobility and carrier LT while decreasing the surface recombination velocities.