A Novel Perovskite Solar Cell with ZnO-Cu2O as Electron Transport Material-Hole Transport Material

Perovskite solar cells have gained remarkable position among the emerging photovoltaic technologies, owing to their increased power conversion efficiency exceeding 20%. The development of various electron transport materials (ETM), perovskite absorbers, hole transport materials (HTM) have contributed well in the efficiency enhancement and stability improvement. One of the major development is the use of ZnO as ETM that replaces TiO
₂
. ZnO has material properties similar to that of TiO
₂
but possesses improved electron mobility. Moreover, ZnO fabrication methods are easier and of low cost. Cuprous oxide (Cu
₂
O), an earth abundant inorganic p-type material, is recently investigated as a best hole transport material that can replace Spiro-OMeTAD. In this paper, the performance of a planar CH
₃
NH
₃
PbI
₃
based solar cell using ZnO as ETM and Cu
₂
O as HTM is evaluated using SCAPS 1D software. The combination of ZnO ETM and Cu
₂
O HTM improves the charge transport and reduces the cost. The overall conversion efficiency obtained for the proposed ZnO - Cu
₂
O perovskite solar cell using CH
₃
NH
₃
PbI
₃
by SCAPS simulation is 22.77%. The performance of CH
₃
NH
₃
PbI
₃
based solar cells with ZnO as ETM and with various hole transport materials such as spiroOMeTAD, CuI, CuSCN and NiO are evaluated and compared with the proposed structure using SCAPS software. The result indicates that ZnO - Cu
₂
O as ETM-HTM pair is a reliable configuration for CH
₃
NH
₃
PbI
₃
based solar cell.