Design and simulation of C2N based solar cell by SCAPS-1D software

Recently, a novel nitrogenated holey two-dimensional material, C _2 N, has been successfully synthesized via a simple wet-chemical reaction. Its merits have drawn much attention from the scientists. However, to the best of our knowledge, few reported works employed C _2 N as photovoltaic materials and the practical solar cells based on C _2 N have not been fabricated in lab. In this work, we carried out simulation using Scaps-1D to investigate the influences of different parameters on the C _2 N based solar cell. By varying the acceptor density, layer thickness, defect density of C _2 N and changing different N layers coupling with C _2 N, we found out that suitable acceptor density, around 10 ^15 cm ^−3 , large layer thickness of C _2 N and low defect density were key factors to obtain high-performance solar cells. Small band offset also played an importance role in enhancing the performance of photovoltaic materials. With optimized parameters, C _2 N coupling with CdS as heterojunction can achieve an efficiency of over 17%. This work may provide valuable insights into future design of C _2 N based solar cells.