Optical Modeling and Simulation of Tandem Metal Oxide Solar Cells

An investigation of silicon-based tandem solar cells incorporating Al-doped ZnO (AZO) and Cu2O metal oxides, via two of the most efficient methods of optical modeling, specifically ray tracing and transfer matrix algorithms, was performed. The simulations were conducted based on specialized software, namely Silvaco Atlas and MATLAB, as well as on OPAL2 simulation platform. The optical analysis involved the calculation of the spectral curves for reflectance, absorptance and transmittance for different thicknesses of the thin film layers constituting the cell. It was established the optimum thickness of the AZO layer based on the minimum reflectance and maximum transmittance. Moreover, several materials were investigated in order to determine the optimum buffer layer for the tandem solar cell, based on optical modeling. The optical parameters of the ZnO/Cu2O top subcell were optimized, in order to achieve the highest conversion efficiency of such heterojunction solar cell.