Comprehensive evaluation of recombination confined performance of CuGaO2 for solar cell application

Abstract In the quest to find an outstanding solar energy capturing system that meets requirements like affordability, widespread availability, eco-friendliness, remarkable efficiency, and enduring stability, thorough investigations have been carried out to explore the possibilities presented by "Delafossite" copper gallium oxide (CuGaO2). β-CuGaO2 has an ideal bandgap of 1.5 eV, along with a high absorption coefficient and excellent carrier mobility, making it well-suited for high-efficiency solar cell applications. Theoretical modelling, utilizing the optical and electrical attributes of the CuGaO2 (CGO) material, is employed to analyze its photovoltaic performance when used as an absorber. The detailed balance analysis showed 56.9% of the incident power is wasted in spectrum loss (as thermalisation and non-absorption loss), 10.1% is wasted in intrinsic losses (such as radiative recombination, radiation dilution, entropy generation etc.,), extrinsic recombination (originating from electrical losses, parasitic resistance, finite mobility, surface recombination velocity (SRV), non-ohmic contacts etc.,), eats up another 9.5% and the resultant 23.5% is available as net useful efficiency. Through the careful selection of a suitable buffer counterpart and optimization of material parameters, absorber thickness, defect density, contacts, and SRV, the CGO device demonstrates an efficiency of 23.5%.