Numerical Modelling of High Efficiency ZnO/GaAs Solar Cells Using Triple-Layer Anti-Reflective Coating

Abstract

The choice of substrate’s material plays vital role in order to achieve good efficiency. Zinc oxide (ZnO) and gallium arsenide (GaAs) were thus selected as n-type and p-type, respectively, because of their properties that can help generate high current and voltage, which will indirectly result in high efficiency. However, reflectance of light was still occurred due to its design of solar cell. Applying triple layer anti-reflective coating (TLARC) on the top of n-ZnO/p-GaAs solar cell will be study in this paper to reduce the reflectance and maximizing the transmittance. A broad wavelength range of 250 nm to 1200 nm will be used to analyze all nine triplet materials of triple layer anti-reflective coating (TLARC). The efficiency of solar cells will be investigated in this research using Personal Computer 1-Dimensional (PC1D) simulation. The parameters used to simulate PC1D are maximum power output , open-circuit voltage , and short-circuit current (). The efficiency of n-ZnO/p-GaAs solar cell without using any anti-reflective coating (ARC) is 17.76% and it increase to 19.65% after SiO₂/ZnO/Si₃N₄ as triple layer anti-reflective coating (TLARC) be used on the top of the solar cell.