Numerical Modeling of the Copper-Indium-Selenium (CIS) based Solar Cell Performance by AMPS-1D

Abstract

This paper analyzes the copper-indium-selenium (CIS) and copper-indium-gallium-selenium (CIGS) based solar cell performance by AMPS-1D numerical modeling. Various factors which affect the solar cell's performance are investigated, carefully referring to practical cells, to obtain the optimum parameters for the CIS and CIGS solar cells. Among the factors studied are thickness and bandgap energy of absorber layer, thickness of buffer layer of the cells. In this study, an efficiency of 19.4% has been achieved with CdS based buffer layer with performance parameters of 0.68 V for open circuit voltage (Voc), 35 mA/cm2 for short circuit current (Jsc) and 0.82 for fill factor (FF). This solar cell has been used as a base case for simulation. It is found that the optimum solar cell, regardless whether it is CIS or CIGS type, has the absorber thickness between 2000 nm and 3000 nm. Moreover, the optimum bandgap of the CIS and CIGS absorber layer are found to be 1.04 eV and 1.15 eV, respectively. The thickness of buffer layer has been found in the range of 40 nm to 50 nm as the optimum value.