High-performance lead-free perovskite solar cell: a theoretical study

In the present work, a lead-free perovskite solar cell was designed using methylammonium tin iodide (CH 3 NH 3 SnI 3 ), poly-3- hexylthiophene and titanium dioxide (TiO 2 ) as absorber layer, hole transport layer and electron transport layer respectively. Perovskite solar cells have made impressive strides recently, and their performance has significantly improved. A fundamental n–i–p planar heterojunction structure of photovoltaic cells was designed and simulated with solar cell capacitance simulation software (Scaps-1D). In this study, different parameters such as thickness, acceptor density, temperature and defect density were varied to improve the device performance. Optimum values of different parameters were used to attain good results for the photovoltaic device such as power convergence efficiency (PCE), V OC , fill factor and J SC of 27.54%, 1.0216 V, 86.56% and 31.14 mA/cm 2 , respectively. The acceptor density was varied from 1 × 10 −12 to 1 × 10 −20 cm −3 for the proposed device structure. The PCE of this device structure increased when different charge transport materials were used. This simulation study showed that the proposed cell structure could be used to construct a photovoltaic cell with a higher efficiency.