Study of the influence of doping and layer thickness on the efficiency of ZnO/porous-Si/Si photoconverters

Abstract

The article investigates the effect of doping and layer thickness on the efficiency of solar cells based on the ZnO/porous-Si/Si heterojunction using PC1D simulation. The results show that optimizing the ZnO and porous-Si layers' thickness significantly affects the solar cell's performance. The maximum current value was achieved at a ZnO thickness of 10 μm and porous-Si of 1 μm. In comparison, with an increase in the thickness to 15 μm, the material approaches the bulk, which reduces the efficiency due to increased carrier recombination. A significant effect of the doping concentration of the ZnO film was found. When the doping concentration increased to 1019 cm⁻³, the highest efficiency was achieved – 22.6%. However, excessive doping causes increased carrier recombination, which leads to a decrease in cell performance.