Enhancement of photo-conversion efficiency of perovskite solar cells using heterojunction bipolar transistor configuration

Abstract

In this work, we propose the enhancement of photo-conversion efficiency of perovskite solar cells by employing three-terminal heterojunction bipolar transistor architecture. We have performed both optical and electrical simulation to characterize the proposed solar cell structure and analyze its performance based on different design parameters. Since charge carrier generation, transport and recombination mechanisms determine the performance of a solar cell, we have optimized our proposed structure through robust optoelectronic simulation with a view to enhancing the device efficiency to a maximum value of 38.63%. In doing so, we have varied the thickness of different layers in the structure and changed the doping concentration of three regions, to determine the most efficient combination of these parameters to maximize the device efficiency. We have also investigated the effect of bulk and surface recombination on the performance of the solar cell. In the end, we have compared our result with a conventional two-terminal structure to demonstrate the superior performance of this novel three-terminal device architecture. The analysis and results presented in this thesis would provide a promising direction to the design of solar cell architecture utilizing HBT configuration.