International Conference on Electrical, Computer and Communication Engineering (ECCE), February 16-18, 2017, Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh

Numerical Analysis of Stacked Layered CZTS and

CZTSe-Based Thin Film Solar Cell
Mohammad Wahidur Rahman1,2*, Saad Mohammad Abdullah1, Mohammed Akhyar Bakth1, Quazi Nafees Ul Islam1
and Md. Ashraful Hoque1
1
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Islamic University of Technology
Board Bazar, Gazipur-1704, Bangladesh
2
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
The Ohio State University
Columbus, OH 43210, USA
*wahidur@iut-dhaka.edu

Abstract— In this paper, single CZTSe layer and stacked layer
of CZTS and CZTSe have been optimized as absorber layers in
thin film solar cell and the variation of cell performance was
observed. CZTSe layer was optimized by varying thickness,
carrier density and defect density and obtained JSC of 27.87
mAcm-2, Voc of 0.702V, fill factor of 65.41% and efficiency of
12.79%. By varying the thickness and carrier density of both
CZTS and CZTSe together, solar cell was optimized with stacked
layer of CZTS and CZTSe. Solar cell with the stacked absorber
layer was found to have better cell performance among different
CZTS-based solar cells with JSC of 29.23 mAcm-2, VOC of 1.1188
V, FF of 71.70% and efficiency of 23.45%.
Keywords— thin film; solar cell; CZTS; CZTSe; SCAPS;
I. INTRODUCTION
Thin Film Solar cells, which are commercially available
like a-Si are associated with problems such as low efficiency.
Due to shortage of Te and toxicity of Cd, CdTe based solar
cells are also lagging behind moreover shortage and high cost
of In for the case of CIGS technology is its main drawback.
Whereas, quaternary semiconductors like Cu2ZnSnS4 (CZTS)
and Cu2ZnSnSe4 (CZTSe) can be a potential alternative to the
available technology with the advantages such as non-toxicity,
earth abundance and low cost of raw materials and potential for
providing high-efficiency. Moreover, other properties such as
high absorption co-efficient of over 104 cm-1 and a direct band
gap value about 1.4-1.5 eV for CZTS and §1.0 eV for CZTSe
make these solar cells as attractive candidates [1].
There are various techniques like chemical bath deposition
(CBD), nanocrystal (NCs)-based fabrication method, thermal
evaporation, DC/RF sputtering, electrochemical deposition,
pulsed laser deposition, co-evaporation, spray pyrolysis, and
sol–gel formation for deposition of CZTS, CZTSe thin film
solar cells. By sputtering method, efficiency of 6.77% and by
evaporation method 6.81% was also achieved for CZTS thin
film solar cell [2, 3]. Shin et al. prepared CZTS (Al:ZnO/i-
ZnO/CdS/CZTS) structure with an efficiency of 8.4% using
vacuum process [4]. Mono-grain Layer (MGL) technique and
sol-gel sulfurization process were used to prepare CZTSe
solar cell with efficiencies of 2.16% and 2.76% respectively,
which are very low [5, 6]. Highest 9.15% efficiency for
CZTSe solar cell was obtained using evaporation method by
Repins et al. [7].
A single junction solar cell with a band gap of 1.34 eV has
maximum Shockley–Queisser limit (SQL) of 33.7% whereas
solar cells with CZTSe may have SQL limit of at least 30.9%
(with a band gap of §1.0 eV) [8]. So enough scope is available
for improving the efficiency of different CZTS-based thin film
solar cells. Efficiency of CZTS-based solar cells can be
improved by adding high Se content due to which more facile
p-type and n-type doping will be possible.
Due to the quaternary properties of CZTS or CZTSe
semiconductors; the structural, crystallographic, and electrical
properties can be influenced by stoichiometric composition,
which will result in forming native defects [9]. As a result of
these defects and due to the small grain size of CZTS or
CZTSe, short diffusion length of carriers are resulted, which
result in low efficiency [2]. The higher series resistance and
lower shunt resistance of the cell also cause the cell efficiency
to reduce. In order to improve the efficiency of CZTS-based
thin solar cells and fully understand their performance, it is
necessary to systematically explore the influence of the basic
factors in the performance of the cells.
Numerical analysis is an effective way to predict the effect
of changes in material properties, measure the potential merits
of cell structures and then optimize the structure of cells. So,
by numerical analysis based on SCAPS (Solar Cell
Capacitance Simulator), in our previous study, a solar cell was
optimized with CZTS as absorber layer. The structure used for
simulation was n-Al:ZnO/i-ZnO/n-CdS/p-CZTS (Fig. 1).
After optimization of CZTS absorber layer and CdS buffer
layer, a conversion efficiency of 21.79% and fill factor of
68.79% (with VOC of 1.0017 V and JSC of 31.624 mAcm-2) has
been achieved at 300 K for CZTS thin film solar cell [10]. The
optimized values of different layer parameters of CZTS and
CdS are shown in Table I. In extension to that work, in this
study, the performance dependency of solar cells with only
CZTSe as absorber layer and then using a stacked absorber
layer containing both CZTS and CZTSe on a set of geometric
and physical parameters such as absorber layer’s thickness,
carrier density, and defect density has been observed using
SCAPS-1D.
II. METHODOLOGY
SCAPS is an one dimensional solar cell simulation
program developed at the department of Electronics and
Information Systems (ELIS) of the University of Gent,
Belgium [11]. SCAPS can simulate up to 7 semiconductor
layers and can calculate energy bands, concentrations and
currents at a given working point, J-V characteristics, AC
characteristics (C and G as function of V and/or f), and

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spectral response both in light and dark condition which is TABLE I. PERFORMANCE PARAMETER USED IN NUMERICAL ANALYSIS
based on the hole and electron continuity equations together Parameters p-CZTSe p-CZTS n-CdS i-ZnO n-ZnO
with Poisson equation. SCAPS was used for our simulation as
Thickness,W (nm) 3000 3000 60 50 200
its simulation results have good agreement with experimental
Relative permittivity 8.6 10 10 9 9
results [12]. Electron affinity (eV) 4.6 4.5 4.2 4.6 4.6
Eg (eV) 1 1.5 2.4 3.3 3.3
The structure used for solar cell with CZTSe absorber Nc (cm-3) 7.9×1017 2.2×1018 2.2×1018 2.2×1018 2.2×1018
layer was n-Al:ZnO/i-ZnO/n-CdS/p-CZTSe (Fig. 1). While Nv (cm-3) 4.5×1018 1.8×1019 1.8×1019 1.8×1019 1.8×1019
simulating the solar cell with combination of CZTS and μn (cm2 V-1 s-1) 40 100 100 100 100
CZTSe as absorber layer, the structure used was n-Al:ZnO/i- μp (cm2 V-1 s-1) 10 25 25 25 25
ZnO/n-CdS/p-CZTS/p-CZTSe (Fig. 1). The baseline values of Donor density (cm-3) 0 0 1018 105 1018
the physical parameters used in this study for different Acceptor density(cm-3) 1018 1018 0 0 0
Defect density (cm-3) 1015 1015 1016 1016 1016
material layers were all cited from experimental study,
reasonable estimates in some cases [3, 10, 13, 14], or
literatures, which are summarized in Table I. By incorporating TABLE II. EXPERIMENTAL VALUES OF SERIES AND SHUNT RESISTANCE
these material parameters into SCAPS for all of the analysis Efficiency (%) Rs (Ÿcm2) Rsh (Ÿcm2) Reference
aspects, changes in the values for efficiency, open circuit 5.74 6.41 424 [15]
voltage, short circuit current and fill factor were observed. 6.77 4.25 370 [2]
8.4 4.5 - [4]
In each material layer only Gaussian type of single level
defects was introduced in order to make the simulation model
For optimized thickness of CZTSe the results found are
as simple as possible. These defects were all compensating
JSC of 29.77 mAcm-2, VOC of 0.483V, FF of 51.01% and
defects that positioned at the intrinsic level which is close to
efficiency of 7.34%.
the mid-gap. Furthermore, series resistance, (RS) = 4.25 Ÿ and
shunt resistance, (RSh) = 350 Ÿ were used in the simulation to As the efficiency obtained by optimizing the thickness is
measure the device performances. These values were chosen very low, using this optimized thickness next the carrier
with reference to different experimental works as shown in density of CZTSe was varied from 1012 cm-3 to 1019 cm-3. The
Table II. Here operating temperature was set to 300 K, cell performance is shown in Fig. 3. It is observed that if
illumination condition was set to global AM 1.5 standard. carrier density is increased, JSC increases for a while then
decreases as for higher carrier density there is high number of
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS carriers, so the chances for recombination of carriers increase.
As a result, JSC decreases at higher carrier density. But for
A. Effect of CZTSe (absorber layer) thickness, carrier density increasing carrier density reverse saturation current (I0)
and defect density decreases, so VOC increases according to (1). Now due to
At the beginning of our study, the thickness of the variation of JSC and VOC values, there were changes in FF and
CZTSe layer was varied from 1000 nm (1 μm) to 5000 nm (5 efficiency curve. So, optimum carrier density was chosen as
μm); while for other material parameters we used the 1018 cm-3 because beyond this value the cell performance
optimized values obtained in our previous study, for the solar degrades due to carrier scattering. And carrier density below
cell with conversion efficiency of 21.79% using CZTS as the optimized value gives lower performance as seen from Fig.
absorber layer [10] as shown in Table I. Initially, the carrier 3.
density of CZTSe was considered as 1015 cm-3 and that of
defect density as 1016 cm-3. The cell performance with varied ‫ܦ‬௘ ‫ܦ‬௛ ݇ܶ ‫ܫ‬௅
‫ܫ‬଴ ൌ ‫݊ݍܣ‬௜ଶ ൬ ൅ ൰ǡ ܸை஼ ൌ  Ž ൬ ൅ ͳ൰ሺͳሻ
CZTSe layer thickness is shown in Fig. 2. It was found that ‫ܮ‬௘ ܰ஺ ‫ܮ‬௛ ܰ஽ ‫ݍ‬ ‫ܫ‬଴
short circuit current density (JSC), open circuit voltage (VOC)
and efficiency increases with increase in thickness, but fill The results obtained by optimizing carrier density at 1018
factor decreases. As thickness is increased more electron-hole cm-3 are JSC of 23.86 mAcm-2, VOC of 0.664V, FF of 63.17%
pairs are generated because thicker layer can absorb more and efficiency of 10.01%.
photons which results in higher efficiency. Now, if thickness Next optimization of the defect density of CZTSe was
is increased too much, then photons will be absorbed deeper done using the optimized thickness and carrier density and
into the absorber layer. As a result generated electron-hole keeping parameter of other materials unchanged. Defect
pairs recombine before they can reach the depletion region. density was varied from 1012 cm-3 to 1018 cm-3. The cell
That is why after a certain thickness there is no significant performance is shown in Fig. 4, where it has been found that
improvement in cell performance. Moreover, higher thickness as defect density increases, JSC, VOC, FF and efficiency
is not cost effective also. Therefore, from Fig. 2, thickness of decreases because increase in defect density means addition of
3000 nm was chosen as the optimum value for CZTSe. recombination carrier in absorber layer.

Fig. 1. Solar Cell Structures used in simulation with (a) CZTS, (b) CZTSe and (c) Stacked layer of CZTS and CZTSe

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 absorber layer (containing both CZTS and CZTSe) was used
which is discussed in the next section.
B. Effect of combining CZTS and CZTSe as a stacked
absorber layer
Since low efficiency was obtained by using CZTSe as
absorber layer, so stacked layer of CZTS and CZTSe was used
as absorber layer and observed the effect of variation of
thickness and carrier density of absorber layer on cell
performance. The overall cell performance for different
thickness of CZTS and CZTSe has been shown in Table III.
(a)
Here, thickness of both CZTS and CZTSe layer was varied. At
first, thickness of CZTS was kept smaller than CZTSe
thickness. As thickness of CZTS was made to increase and
simultaneously CZTSe thickness was made to decrease, it was
observed that there is increase in efficiency and fill factor. But
it is difficult to practically fabricate thinner absorber layer.
Therefore, thickness of 1000nm was chosen for CZTSe layer
and kept increasing thickness of CZTS layer. But keeping in
mind that thicker layer increases the fabrication cost,
thickness of 3000nm was selected for CZTS, as for higher
thickness the efficiency is not increasing significantly. For the
optimized values of thickness, the J-V characteristics of the
cell are shown in Fig. 5. The obtained results are JSC of 30.92
(b)
mAcm-2, VOC of 0.9913 V, FF of 68.56% and efficiency of
Fig. 2. Effect of variation of CZTSe absorber layer thickness on (a) Jsc, 21.02%.
Voc; (b)Fill factor, Efficiency
Next for these values of optimized thickness, variation of
carrier density for both CZTS and CZTSe was made and
From Fig. 4 it can be observed that defect density of less observed their combined effect on cell performance as shown
than or equal 1015 cm-3 will provide good cell performance. So, in Table IV. First, the carrier density of CZTSe was kept at
1015 cm-3 can be considered as the optimized defect density. 1018 cm-3 which was optimized in previous section and varied
For optimized thickness, carrier density and defect density of the carrier density of CZTS from 1016 cm-3 to 1019 cm-3. The
CZTSe, the results obtained are JSC of 27.87 mAcm-2, VOC of efficiency and fill factor increases up to 1018 cm-3 and then
0.702 V, FF of 65.41% and efficiency of 12.79%. decreases for 1019 cm-3 carrier density of CZTS. So, 1018 cm-3
The efficiency obtained by using CZTSe as absorber layer was chosen as the optimum value of CZTS carrier 18
density.
-3
is less than that of CZTS. This is because the bandgap of Now keeping the carrier density of CZTS at 10 cm and
CZTSe is smaller than bandgap of CZTS. In fact the band gap changing the carrier density of CZTSe, no significant
of CZTSe is less than the theoretical optimal bandgap of 1.4 variations
18 -3
were found in efficiency and fill factor. Therefore,
eV. In an attempt to improve the cell performance combined 10 cm was selected as the optimized carrier density for
both CZTS and CZTSe.

Fig. 3. Effect of variation of CZTSe carrier density on (a) Jsc, Voc; (b)Fill Fig. 4. Effect of variation of CZTSe defect density on (a) Jsc, Voc; (b)Fill
factor, Efficiency factor, Efficiency

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 TABLE III PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS BY VARYING ABSORBER LAYER
THICKNESS

CZTS CZTSe JSC VOC FF Efficiency

thickness thickness (mAcm-2) (V) (%) (%)
(nm) (nm)
1000 2000 24.05 0.9506 66.34 15.17
1500 1500 26.69 0.9675 67.61 17.46
2000 1000 28.49 0.9778 68.14 18.99
3000 1000 30.92 0.9913 68.56 21.02
(a) 4000 1000 32.53 0.9987 68.64 22.30
5000 1000 33.68 1.0043 68.66 23.22
6000 1000 34.52 1.0085 68.55 23.87

TABLE IV PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS BY VARYING ABSORBER LAYER

CARRIER DENSITY

CZTS CZTSe JSC VOC FF Efficiency

carrier carrier (mAcm-2) (V) (%) (%)
density density
(cm-3) (cm-3)
1016 1018 30.92 0.9913 68.56 21.02
(b) 1017 1018 29.73 1.0577 70.60 22.21
1018 1018 29.23 1.1188 71.70 23.45
Fig. 5. J-V characteristics of solar cell with stacked absorber layer (containing 1019 1018 23.96 1.1758 25.96 7.31
both CZTS and CZTSe) after optimizing (a) Thickness; (b) Carrier Density 1018 1017 29.23 1.1187 71.70 23.44
1018 1019 29.23 1.1189 71.71 23.45
After optimizing both thickness and carrier density, the
obtained J-V characteristics of the cell is shown in Fig. 5. The
Efficiencies of Cu2ZnSnS4-Based Thin Film Solar Cells by Using
obtained results are JSC of 29.23 mAcm-2, VOC of 1.1188 V, FF Preferential Etching Technique," Applied Physics Express, vol. 1, pp.
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