Effect of various charge transport layers and material properties on antimony chalcogenide

Sb 2 X 3 , also known as antimony chalcogenide (Sb 2 S 3 , Sb 2 SSe 3 , and Sb 2 Se 3 ), has received significant attention as a potential photovoltaic material due to its low toxicity, earth abundance, and phase stability. However, the experimentally achieved efficiency is nowhere near comparable to already commercialized Si-based cells. To perceive the inhibiting processes in bridging the gap between the Shockley–Queisser limit and the experimental efficiency for this material system and to optimize the device structure to improve the efficiency, we used a two-level modeling approach to create Sb 2 X 3 thin-film absorber-based heterojunction photovoltaic cells in this work. Inceptive simulation for baseline equivalency is adapted with Au/Spiro-OMeTAD/Sb 2 X 3 /CdS/FTO device architecture, an experimentally fabricated structure with measured parameters, and an ideal defect model. The absorber layer thickness, radiative recombination coefficient, acceptor density, stoichiometric defect density, interface defect density, and series and shunt resistance are optimized in the subsequent simulation level to increase efficiency. The performance of Sb 2 X 3 -based thin-film photovoltaic cells with various charge transport layers such as Cu 2 O, NiO, and Spiro-OMeTAD (HTLs) and CdS, Zn (O, S), and TiO 2 (ETLs) are examined. The efficiency of the optimized device from the aforementioned two-stage optimization is 23%, which is higher than the traditional Sb 2 X 3 -based thin-film solar cell.