Simulation of TiO₂/CuO solar cells with SCAPS-1D software

Abstract

TiO2/CuO and TiO2/Cu2O solar cells are promising devices for photovoltaic applications. The power conversion efficiency of these cells, however, remains low. We used the SCAPS-1D program to perform simulations of n-TiO2/p-Cu2O and n-TiO2/p-CuO thin-film solar cells. The short circuit current and efficiency were 13.3 mA cm−2, 28.4 mA cm−2 and 13.7% 22.4%, respectively, Furthermore, we evaluated some specific parameters of n-TiO2/p-CuO heterostructure, such as the influence of temperature, interface state density, metal work function, electron and hole capture cross-section, shallow uniform donor density (ND) for TiO2 with constant uniform acceptor doping density (NA) in CuO and shallow uniform acceptor density (NA) for CuO with constant (ND) in TiO2. Our findings revealed that the efficiency of n-TiO2/p-CuO solar cells can be improved by increasing metal work function of the contact and by decreasing defects and the electron and hole capture cross-section.