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Less efficient solar cells are a hindrance in the commercialization of thin-film solar cells (TFSCs). Perovskite materials have now been extensively studied as an innovative epoch candidate. They are considered a panacea in the field of photovoltaics, as they levitate the Power Conversion Efficiency (PCE) of the device with proper encapsulation of the materials. In this paper, the proffer structures are deliberately devised and reckon for optimizing the thickness of prototypical materials such as Methylammonium lead iodide (CH3NH3PbI3) and Methylammonium lead bromide (CH3NH3PbBr3) perovskite, as there is a dire need to extract high conversion efficiency with minimum losses. Moreover, to improve the extraction of electrons and suppress the recombination losses, three Electron Transport Layers (ETLs) were introduced, which help in maintaining the open-circuit voltage (Voc). In addition, this study signifies that the lead iodidebased perovskite structure was found to more efficient as compared to lead bromide. The numerically extracted results after optimizing the structure under Standard Testing Conditions (STC) delivered the highest η of 24.89% with short-circuit current density, Jsc=24.04 mA/cm², open-circuit voltage, VOC =1.31 V and Fill factor, FF=86.76% with an optimum thickness of 580 nm. Moreover, this fact-finding study also throws light on the temperature of the device and discovered result markedly shows that high temperature deteriorates the η of the cell. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modification of a cell's architecture can enhance the performance parameters. This paper reports on the numerical modeling of a thin-film organic solar cell (OSC) featuring distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) pairs. The utilization of DBR pairs via the proposed method was found to be beneficial in terms of increasing the performance parameters. The extracted results showed that using DBR pairs helps capture the reflected light back into the active region by improving the photovoltaic parameters as compared to the structure without DBR pairs. Moreover, implementing three DBR pairs resulted in the best enhancement gain of 1.076% in power conversion efficiency. The measured results under a global AM of 1.5G were as follows: open circuit voltage (Voc) = 0.839 V; short circuit current density (Jsc) = 10.98 mA/cm2; fill factor (FF) = 78.39%; efficiency (η) = 11.02%. In addition, a thermal stability analysis of the proposed design was performed and we observed that high temperature resulted in a decrease in η from 11.02 to 10.70%. Our demonstrated design may provide a pathway for the practical application of OSCs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Material optimization for CIGS solar cell is performed. • DBR pairs found to be beneficial with CIGS solar cell and results in the enhancement of performance parameter. • Thermal Stability with different operating temperatures is performed. • Highest efficiency of 23.29% is achieved. Reflection losses in solar cells lead towards thermalization losses which greatly affect the performance of the cell. This paper aims to report and explore a novel architecture to reduce the reflection losses by utilizing distributed braggs reflector (DBR) technique which is used to enhance the absorption of light in the active region. Theoretically, thickness optimization for different materials including Window, Buffer and Back Surface Field (BSF) was performed with different operating temperature with the objective to extract high performance parameters. After optimizing the materials for the effective layer, DBR pairs was introduced which delivers the highest efficiency (ղ) of 23.29 % with the correlated parameters such as, Shot circuit current density, J sc = 27.83 mA/cm2, Open circuit voltage, V oc = 1.02 V and Fill factor, FF = 87.76 %. The results signify that the structure with BSF and DBR pairs shows enhanced performance parameters as compared to those structure without these layers. In addition, it has been observed that the increased number of DBR pairs result in the enhancement of ղ by 0.91 % under 1.5 AM. The results strongly convinced that the introduction of DBR pairs significantly improves the performance parameters. Moreover, the optimized structure was tested with various operating temperature to examine its thermal stability towards high temperature. The proposed design with rigorously optimized layers can be a good choice for solar cell technology (STC) and can be employed as a substitute to less efficient solar cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organic solar cells (OSCs) have significantly reduced the overall cost of solar energy system, making solar oriented devices universally clean and green energy source. However, to make OSCs more competitive in diverse photovoltaic (PV) technologies, it is essential to attain high efficiencies by analyzing novel materials and realizing optimal arrangements of donor–acceptor materials. In this paper, we attempt to show a terse depth insight of OSCs by investigating three novel architecture schemes with special emphasis on improving the power conversion efficiency. The materials include include i) poly (3-hexylthiophene):[(6,6)]-phenyl C61 butyric acid methyl ester (P3HT:PCBM), ii) thieno [3,4-b] thiophene-alt-benzodithiophene [6,6]:-phenyl-C61 butyric acid methyl ester (PTB7:PCBM), and iii) poly{4,4′-bis(2-ethylhexyl) dithieno [3,2-b:2′,3′-d] silole-alt-5,6-difluoro-4,7-bis (4-hexylthiophen-2-yl)-2,1,3-benzothiadiazle): [6,6]-phenyl-C61 butyric acid methyl ester (PDTS-DTffBT:PCBM), respectively. Results show that the extracted performance parameters including short circuit current (J SC) = 10.88 mA/m2, open circuit voltage (V oc) = 0.82 V, fill factor (FF) = 83.52 %, and efficiency (ƞ) = 7.49 % is highest for the second scheme among others. Different intermediate layers have also been analyzed with the objective to reduce the recombination losses and enhance the power conversion efficiency of the proposed cell. The impact of temperature on the overall ղ is also presented and it is discovered that high temperature reduces the performance of the solar cell. Furthermore, the performance of the proposed structure is compared with various kinds of OSCs and it is found that our design exhibit highest efficiency. The achievement of high efficiencies in this work may accelerate the practical applications of OSCs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]