Study of the Effect of Absorber Layer Thickness on the Efficiency of a Perovskite Solar Cell (FTO/TiO₂/MAPbI₃/Spiro-OMeTAD) Using the SCAPS-1D Simulation Program

Abstract

In this study, the aim is to find out the effect of the thickness of the perovskite absorber layer (MAPbI₃) on the photovoltaic performance of a solar cell using numerical simulation using the SCAPS-1D program. The studied cell structure, consisting of four layers, was designed as follows: transparent conductive oxide layer (FTO) / electron transport layer (TiO₂) / absorber layer (MAPbI₃) / hole transport layer (Spiro-OMeTAD). The simulation results showed that the thickness of the absorber layer (MAPbI₃) and the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of the solar cell are a nonlinear relationship. The thickness of the absorber layer was changed in the wide range (200-2000nm) in steps of (200nm) each. The simulation was performed with the illumination intensity of (AM1.5G, 1000 mW/cm²) and at a temperature of (300K). Short circuit current density, open circuit voltage, fill factor, and power conversion efficiency (Jsc, Voc, FF, PCE) of the solar cell have been investigated for each thickness of the absorber layers. From the results, the best thickness of the absorber layer (MAPbI₃) will be in the range (800 nm) for the studied cell in the present work. The best thickness results in the maximum photon absorption with minimum recombination and charge transport resistance, thus yielding the best performance and highest efficiency of the solar cell. Based on this research, it is concluded that optimizing the absorber layer thickness is one of the main factors to obtain high efficiency. Once the optimal thickness for this solar cell had been reached, the results were:

The short circuit current density (Jsc) is 22.173 mA/cm².

Open-circuit voltage (Voc) = 1.082 V

Fill factor (FF) = 74.989 %

The efficiency of power conversion (PCE) = 24.24 %