Investigating the performance of perovskite solar cell with tin oxide as electron transport layer by SCAPS-1D device simulation

Abstract Electron transport layer (ETL) is one of the most essential layers in determining photovoltaic (PV) performance of perovskite solar cells (PSCs). The role of the ETL is to facilitate the charge collection in the device. Studies have shown that the use of tin oxide (SnO 2 ) as ETL could improve the efficiency and stability of PSCs while reducing their degradation. In this work, the Solar Cell Capacitance Simulator (SCAPS-1D) is utilized to investigate the performance of PSCs with SnO 2 as the ETL. The device is composed of FTO (Contact)/SnO 2 (ETL)/CH 3 NH 3 PbI 3 (Perovskite)/Cu 2 O (HTL)/Au (Contact). The effects of thickness, dopant concentration, and defect density of the SnO 2 ETL on the performance of PSCs have been investigated. From the results, the optimum parameters for the SnO 2 ETL have been identified at thickness of 10 nm, dopant concentration of 1 ×10 17 cm −3 and defect density of 1 ×10 14 cm −3 . With the optimized parameters, the final performance of the PSC demonstrates power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 18.31%.