Band alignment in SnS thin-film solar cells: Possible origin of the low conversion efficiency

Band alignment of SnS/Zn(O,S) heterojunctions in SnS thin film solar cells

SnS Thin Film Solar Cells: Perspectives and Limitations

Thin film solar cells have reached commercial maturity and extraordinarily high efficiency that make them competitive even with the cheaper Chinese crystalline silicon modules. However, some issues (connected with presence of toxic and/or rare elements) are still limiting their market diffusion. For this reason new thin film materials, such as Cu2ZnSnS4 or SnS, have been introduced so that expe...

Towards high efficiency thin film solar cells

As an alternative to single crystal silicon photovoltaics, thin film solar cells have been extensively explored for miniaturized cost-effective photovoltaic systems. Though the fight to gain efficiency has been severely engaged over the years, the battle is not yet over. In this review, we comb the fields to elucidate the strategies towards high efficiency thin films solar cells and provide poi...

Evaluation of the efficiency potential of intermediate band solar cells based on thin-film chalcopyrite materials

This paper discusses the potential of the intermediate band solar cell IBSC concept to improve the efficiency of thin-film chalcopyrite solar cells. The results show that solar cells based on CuGaS2, with a radiative limiting efficiency of 46.7%, exhibit the highest potential. A simple method for the identification of transition elements that when incorporated in CuGaS2 could possibly introduce...

Design of Silicon Nano-Bars Anti-Reflection Coating to Enhance Thin Film Solar Cells Efficiency

In this paper a novel anti-reflection (AR) coating based on silicon nano-bars is designed and its impact on the performance of crystalline silicon (c-Si) thin-film solar cells is extensively studied. Silicon nano-bars with optimized size and period are embedded on top of the active layer, under a 100nm Si3N4 layer. As a result of the proposed layer stack, an inhomogeneous intermediate layer wit...