Solar Energy 201 (2020) 827–835

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Solar Energy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/solener

Numerical analysis of earth-abundant Cu2ZnSn(SxSe1-x)4 solar cells based on T

Spectroscopic Ellipsometry results by using SCAPS-1D
⁎
Lhoussayne Et-taya, Touria Ouslimane, Abdellah Benami
OTEA Department of physics, Faculty of Sciences and Techniques, Moulay Ismail University of Meknes, BP 509 Boutalamine 52000, Errachidia, Morocco

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Mixed chalcogenide CZTSSe with earth abundant elements, inexpensive, environmental-friendly and impressive
Thin film solar cell photovoltaic performance is a promising absorber material for kesterite thin film solar cells of third generation.
Third generation In this work, a numerical simulation of p-CZTSSe/n-CdS heterojunction solar cells have been presented using one
CZTSSe dimensional Solar Capacitance Simulator. The influence of composition, absorber thickness, defect density and
SCAPS
working temperature on Voc, Jsc, FF and power conversion efficiency has been investigated. The optimized cell
Absorption coefficient
Efficiency
shows 23.16% efficiency with a Voc ~ 0.724 V corresponding to 40% of the S ratio.
S + Se
Composition and Spectroscopic Ellipsometry

1. Introduction
In the present situation of climate change, the exploitation of re-
newable energy sources in particular solar photovoltaic (PV) has be-
come a priority (Quaschning, 2019). The energy coming from the sun
has the highest potential energy of all renewable resources (Birant
et al., 2019), and the Earth's surface receives in just one hour enough
energy to meet the mankind’s energy requirements for one year
(Quaschning, 2019). As solar energy is infinite, clean, and the most
abundant renewable energy resource solar cells can be used in everyday
life to convert sunlight directly into electricity (Yang et al., 2016).
Solar cells can be categorized into four generations (Fig. 1) (Luceño-
Sánchez et al., 2019, Chilvery et al., 2015, Khalate et al., 2018, Hussain,
2018, Jean et al., 2015, Benami, 2019, Jayawardena et al., 2013), i.e
first-generation (1G) based on crystalline silicon (c-Si) and GaAs (Miles
et al., 2005, Jain et al., 2015, Santana and Morales-Acevedo, 2001,
Grandidier et al., 2012). Second-generation (2G) also called thin film
such as CIGS, amorphous silicon (a-Si) and CdTe (Kosyachenko et al.,
2014, Xu et al., 2018b, Pantoja Enriquez et al., 2013, Daoudia et al.,
2016), third-generation (3G) as emerging solar cells technologies such
as CZTSSe, DSSC and Quantum dot (Pal et al., 2015, Gong et al., 2012,
Kamat, 2008) and novel solar cells of fourth-generation (4G) also
known as “inorganics-in-organics” like hybrid perovskite (Jayawardena
et al., 2013, Chilvery et al., 2015, Luceño-Sánchez et al., 2019,
Vidyasagar et al., 2018).
Currently, c-Si based solar cells dominates the market (~90%), but
this technology is expensive and waste the energy by producing heat
(Reinhard et al., 2012, Peter Amalathas and Alkaisi, 2019). As a re-
sponse to overcome some of these limitations, thin film solar cells
(TFSCs) were introduced, because a few hundred nm of TFSCs absorbed
irradiation equivalent to 2 µm thickness of c-Si (Chen et al., 2015).
Among TFSCs technologies, CdTe (22.1%), CIGS (23.4%) and per-
ovskite (25.2%), have been extensively researched for the last several
decades (Green et al., 2018, NREL, 2019). However, the existence of
rare (In, Te and Ga), heavy elements (Cd) and poor stability of per-
ovskite limit their large-scale commercial production of PV devices
(Arul and Nithya, 2020). Recently, the solar cell based on Cu2ZnSnS4
(CZTS), Cu2ZnSnSe4 (CZTSe), and Cu2ZnSn(Sx,Se1-x)4 (CZTSSe), with
S
x = S + Se , has attracted increasing attention as an alternative to tradi-
tional CdTe and CIGS (Batibay et al., 2020, Ali et al., 2016, Chen et al.,
2011).
Theoretical and experimental studies have reported that CZTSSe has
kesterite type crystal structure as thermodynamically stable phase,
which derives from CuInSe2 chalcopyrite structure by substituting in-
dium atoms with zinc and tin in equal number (Katagiri et al., 2009,
Rey et al., 2014, Persson, 2010). Moreover, CZTSSe is composed of
Earth-abundant and non-toxic elements, is low cost electricity genera-
tion (Khattak et al., 2018a) and possess excellent properties such as p-
type conductivity (Willoughby, 2014, Ito, 2015), high absorption
coefficient > 10 4 cm−1 and tunable direct band gap in the range of
0.95–1.5 eV depending on the x matched to the solar spectrum, which
makes it a suitable materials for PV applications (Simya et al., 2016,
Mohammadnejad and Parashkouh, 2017, Yang et al., 2016). On the
other hand, CZTSSe exhibits a power conversion efficiencies of 12.7%

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: a.benami@fste.umi.ac.ma (A. Benami).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.solener.2020.03.070
Received 9 November 2019; Received in revised form 17 March 2020; Accepted 19 March 2020
Available online 25 March 2020
0038-092X/ © 2020 International Solar Energy Society. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
L. Et-taya, et al.
Fig. 1. Generations of solar cells technologies.
Fig. 2. (a) Schematic diagram of the proposed structure, (b) corresponding
energy levels of different layers exhibiting the main processes of carrier
transportation.
with double-emitter (Kim et al., 2014) and 12.3% (Yang et al., 2016)
fabricated with solution and sputtering deposition techniques, respec-
tively, which are still much lower than the limit efficiency of 32.8%
(Siebentritt, 2013). The low efficiency arises due to large open circuit
Eg
voltage (VOC) deficit, expressed as ( q − Voc ) , caused by: secondary
phase and electron-hole recombination at the p-n interface, undesirable
energy band alignment, the cation disordering, unpassivated interface
defects, Schottky barrier at the back interface and short minority carrier
lifetimes (Shin et al., 2017, Haight et al., 2017, Dermenji et al., 2019,
Gao et al., 2018, Luan et al., 2018, Li et al., 2020a, 2018, Repins et al.,
2013, Gunawan et al., 2014, Brammertz et al., 2015). Many researchers
tried to overcome the Voc limit of CZTSSe to improve the efficiency by
employing two layers with different majority doping (Yan et al., 2017),
passivation of both bottom and top interfaces (Kim et al., 2017a) and
doping absorber by alkali elements or other metals (Haass et al., 2018,
Sadanand and Dwivedi, 2019, Wu et al., 2019, Altamura et al., 2016,
Xin et al., 2015, Gershon et al., 2015). CZTSSe TFSCs are fabricated
using a variety of vacuum and non-vacuum deposition techniques such
as magnetron sputtering (Li et al., 2019), thermal evaporation (Hegazy
828
Solar Energy 201 (2020) 827–835
et al., 2019, Li et al., 2020b), pulsed laser deposition (Moholkar et al.,
2011), sol–gel (Liu et al., 2015), hydrazine-based solution processing
(Kim et al., 2014), electrochemical deposition (Khattak et al., 2019) and
spry pyrolysis (Espindola-Rodriguez et al., 2013). It is worth men-
tioning that the major problem in deposing CZTSSe is its multiphasic
nature (Olekseyuk et al., 2004).
Numerical simulation is a useful tool to predict the effect of changes
in material proprieties, measure the potential merits of cell structures
and then optimize the structure of cells. Therefore, in this work, a nu-
merical analysis based on Solar Cell Capacitance Simulator (SCAPS) is
performed to investigate the performance dependency of a CZTSSe
TFSCs on a set of physical and geometric parameters such as the
thickness of absorber layer, composition ratio, and defect density. We
also studied the effects of different operating temperatures on cell
performance namely the short circuit current density (Jsc), the open
circuit voltage (Voc) the fill factor (FF) and power conversion efficiency
(η).
To date, to the best of our knowledge, there is no reported work
using absorption coefficient calculated from extension SE results to si-
mulate performances of CZTSSe and compared them with experimental
results.
2. TFSC structure
The device structure, energy levels alignment and carrier transport
through different interfaces of CZTSSe solar cells are shown in Fig. 2(a)
and (b). Our proposed solar cell consists of the following layers:
ZnO:Al/i-ZnO/n-CdS/p-CZTSSe/Mo, Molybdenum (Mo) as a back con-
tact (ohmic contact), a p-type CZTSSe absorber layer, n-type CdS wide
band gap buffer layer deposited on top of absorber layer. Next, the
buffer layer is overlaid with intrinsic ZnO (i-ZnO) as the high resistance
layer which is capped by Al doped ZnO (ZnO:Al) window layer which
serves as transparent conductive oxide (TCO) to collect and move
charges out of the cell. The TCO is covered with an antireflection layer
to increase the absorption of photons in the absorber. The role of i-ZnO
layer is to prevent intermixing between the absorber and TCO and
minimize shunting pathways. The main role of Mo is to collect the
charges generated in the cell and it constitutes the positive pole of the
photovoltaic generator. These crucial elements of a TFSCs structure are
used for determining the performances of a device.
L. Et-taya, et al. Solar Energy 201 (2020) 827–835

3. Numerical simulation and material parameters
Any numerical software capable of solving the basic semiconductor
equations could be used for simulating solar cell devices (Burgelman
et al., 2000, 2004). Several numerical simulators have been used to
explore the performances of TFSCs such as AMPS (Hamri et al., 2019)
wxAMPS (Bag et al., 2020) SILVACO ATLAS (Hima et al., 2019)
COMSOL (Zandi et al., 2020) and SCAPS (Minbashi et al., 2018, Kim
et al., 2017b, Nykyruy et al., 2019, Simya et al., 2016). Among these
simulation programs SCAPS present advantages, like the ability to si-
mulate up to seven different layers with non-routine measurements (C-
V, C-f), tandem cells (Kim et al., 2017b), easy to learn and intuitive to
control, as reported by Burgelman et al. in their comparative studies
between SCAPS and other simulators (Burgelman et al., 2004).
The simulations were conducted using the latest version 3.3.0.7 of
numerical software SCAPS-1D, which is a window-based one-dimen-
sional solar cell simulation software develop at the department of
Electronics and Information Systems of the Gent University, Belgium
(Burgelman et al., 2013). We used SCAPS because its simulations results
have good agreement with existing experimental ones and it’s superior
to other solar device simulator software as mentioned above (Sharbati
et al., 2018, Khattak et al., 2018a, Minbashi et al., 2017, Niemegeers
et al., 1998). SCAPS is based on the Poisson's equation (Eq. (1)), holes
continuity (Eq. (2)), and electrons continuity (Eq. (3)), which are given
by (Benami, 2019, Sze and Ng, 2006).
Benzetta et al., 2020, Simya et al., 2015, Boubakeur et al., 2020,
Fujiwara and Collins, 2018, Gupta and Dixit, 2018, Meher et al., 2016,
Shang et al., 2014). Here, d corresponds to the thickness of the layer, Eg
is the bandgap, χ is the electron affinity, εr is the relative dielectric
constant, Nv , and Nc are the effective density of states of valance band
and conduction band, respectively. ve , vh , μn and μp are the thermal
velocity and mobility of electron and hole, ND and NA represent the
donor and acceptor densities. The capture cross section of electron and
hole is 1x10−15 cm2 and defect type is neutral located in the center of
the band gap. Energy distribution is Gaussian and the characteristic
energy is 0.1 eV. Mo back contact is considered with work function of
5 eV and surface recombination velocity ~1x105 cms−1and 1x107 cms−1
for electrons and holes, respectively. The absorption coefficient data
α(λ) of each layer was imported from external source which calculated
from experimental results in literature (Fujiwara and Collins, 2018). In
the simulation, we have considered the series and shunt resistance as
1.5 Ωcm2 and 600 Ωcm2, respectively (Mahbub et al., 2016). For all
simulation, the cell structure was illuminated with AM 1.5 spectrum
1000 w/m2 from the front side of the TCO.
The band gap and electron affinity of the absorber layer, used in
simulation, are calculated by Eqs. (4) and (5) (Chen et al., 2011).
Eg (CZTSx Se1 − x ) = (1 − x ) Eg (CZTSe ) + xEg (CZTS ) − bx (1 − x ) (4)
χ (CZTSx Se1 − x ) = xχ (CZTS ) + (1 − x ) χ (CZTSe ) (5)

∂ 2Ψ q where b is a bowing optical constant its value is 0.1 eV.

+ [p (x ) − n (x ) + ND − NA + ρp − ρn ] = 0
∂x 2 ε (1)

1 dJp 4. Results and discussion

= Gop (x ) − R (x )
q dx
1 dJn
= −Gop (x ) + R (x )
q dx
where ε is the dielectric constant, q is the electron charge, NA and ND
are densities of acceptor-like and donor-like, Ψ is the electrostatic po-
tential p, n, ρp, ρn, Jp and Jn are hole concentration, electron con-
centration, holes distribution, electrons distribution, current densities
of hole and current densities of electron, respectively. Gop is the optical
generation rate and R is the net recombination from direct and indirect
recombination. All of these parameters are as function of the position
coordinate x.
The SCAPS-1D simulation requires input of the device parameters as
well as material parameters of each layer in the device structure. All
individual materials parameters used in the simulation of TFSCs
structure were selected based on literature values, theory, or reasonable
estimation as showing in Table 1 (Yang et al., 2016, Xu et al., 2018a,
(2)
4.1. Absorption coefficient
(3) The parameters of each layer should be introduced in the SCAPS-1
program definition panel to start simulations. The absorption is an
important parameter to obtain acceptable numerical results. Fig. 3
shows the absorption spectra α(E) of ZnO:Al, i-ZnO, CdS and
CZTSx Se1 − x (where x varied from 0 to 1). The α(E) data for all layers
were obtained from Spectroscopic Ellipsometry (SE) experimental
publications results (Fujiwara and Collins, 2018). From the SE value of
extinction coefficient k and the wavelength λ, the α was calculated
according to Eq. (6), to avoid the empirical α calculated by the simu-
lator.
4πk
α=
λ (6)

Table 1
Physical parameters of each layer used in the simulation of CZTSSe (Yang et al.,
2016, Xu et al., 2018a, Benzetta et al., 2020, Simya et al., 2015, Boubakeur
et al., 2020, Fujiwara and Collins, 2018, Gupta and Dixit, 2018, Meher et al.,
2016, Shang et al., 2014).
Material properties ZnO:Al i-ZnO n-CdS CZTSSe

d (nm) 200 50 50 Variable

Eg (eV) 3.3 3.3 2.4 Variable
χ (eV) 4.4 4.4 4.2 Variable
εr (eV) 9 9 10 13.6
Nc (cm−3) 2.2 × 1018 2.2 × 1018 2.2 × 1018 2.2 × 1018
Nv (cm−3) 1.8 × 1019 1.8 × 1019 1.8 × 1019 1.8 × 1019
νe (cm/s) 107 107 107 107
νh (cm/s) 107 107 107 107
μn (cm2/Vs) 102 102 102 102
μh (cm2/Vs) 2.5 × 101 2.5 × 101 2.5 × 101 2.5 × 101
ND (cm−3) 1020 1019 1017 0
NA (cm−3) 0 1019 0 1018
α (cm−1) File from (Fujiwara and Collins, 2018)
Fig. 3. Absorption coefficient of different layers.

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L. Et-taya, et al. Solar Energy 201 (2020) 827–835

Fig. 4. Energy band diagram of simulated CZTSSe device.

4.2. Energy band diagram

The band alignment is one of the most fundamental physical

properties that influences the photogenerated carriers transport, carrier
recombination across the heterojunction, Fermi level splitting and the
performance of the solar cells (Scheer and Schock, 2011, Minbashi
et al., 2018). The energy difference of conduction band can be altered
by changing the x ratio, which takes a negative or positive band offset
values depending on bandgap of absorber layer. Fig. 4 shows the
complete energy band diagram under light of our device based on
CZTSSe absorber layer obtained from SCAPS-1D simulation software. It
can be seen that the conduction band minimum of CdS buffer layer is
smaller than the conduction band minimum of CZTSSe absorber layer,
so-called cliff-like configuration (Scheer and Schock, 2011, Gao et al.,
2018). This configuration at the interface of CdS/CZTSSe will enhanced
carrier recombination at trap states near the interface and reduces the
interface band gap, resulting in poor cell performance (Siebentritt,
2013). The activation energy of CZTSSe based solar cell has energy Fig. 6. Effect of concentration on FF and efficiency.
lower than the band gap by 200–400 meV. The record kesterite based
solar cell also shows activation energy lower than the band gap by
variation of parameters key as a function of x ratio. From Fig. 5 we
180 meV (Siebentritt, 2013).
observe that, with increasing x, first Voc increases and reaches its
maximum value at 0.713 V for x = 0.4, and then decreases with further
4.3. Effect of composition increase of x which can be assigned to the increase in the defect density
on the surface. At the same time, the Jsc decreased monotonically when
At the start of simulation, we studied the impact of compositional x increases, which can be linked to the blueshift of bandgap that de-
change of absorber layer on the performance of solar cell, while other creases the chance of absorption of photons with low-energy region.
material parameters of different layers are constant. Figs. 5–7 show the Power conversion efficiency and FF present the same behaviour
(Fig. 6); both increase towards the increment of x until the value of 40%
then decrease linearly, as expected owing to degradation of Voc. Our
results are in good agreement with those reported by Barkhouse et al.
(Barkhouse et al., 2012).
The carrier generation rate and the built-in electric field of ZnO:Al/
i-ZnO/n-CdS/p-CZTSSe/Mo cell configuration are also shown in
Fig. 7(a) and (b), respectively. It can be seen that the generation rate
decreases with increasing the depth in the CZTSSe bulk Fig. 7(a) (Shang
et al., 2014). As seen in Fig. 7(b) there is a strong value of the electric
field at the CdS/CZTSSe interface, which drops rapidly as we go inside
the CZTSSe layer (Kumari and Singh Verma, 2014).

4.4. Impact of absorber layer thickness on CZTSSe cell performance

Thickness is a crucial parameter that affect the performances of

device, the material usage and cost (Simya et al., 2015). In TFSCs de-
vices, the optimum absorber thickness ensures an efficient charge col-
lection by balancing both absorption and recombination (Baloch et al.,
Fig. 5. Variation of Voc and Jsc with concentration. 2018, Patel and Ray, 2012). In order to find an optimal range of

830
L. Et-taya, et al.
Fig. 7. Variation of (a) carrier generation rate and (b) electric field as a function of x ratio.
absorber layer thickness for CZTSSe TFSCs, a device with x = 0.4 was
simulated. The thickness of absorber layer was varied from 100 nm to
3000 nm during the simulation.
As shown in Fig. 8(a)-(d), the simulation results indicate that all
parameters such as Voc, Jsc, FF and η are increased with increasing the
absorber thickness. This is mainly because if thickness is increased, then
more photons with longer wavelength are absorbed, which result in the
generation of more electron-hole pairs, due to the high absorption
Fig. 8. Device output variation due to increases of absorbers layer thickness of
CZTSSe.
831
Solar Energy 201 (2020) 827–835
coefficient > 10 4cm−1. This result is in accordance with Beer-Lamberts
law, implying more absorption of photons in the absorber layer and the
generation of more electron-hole pairs, than the improvement of device
performances (Gupta and Dixit, 2018). However, a linear decrease of all
output performances can be observed when the CZTSSe layer thickness
is less than 500 nm, which can be explained by the increasing re-
combination of excess carriers at the back contact due to the incomplete
absorption of incident photons. Because of the slower increasing rate of
device efficiency, the thickness of about 1800 nm is enough to absorb
most of incident photons and appears sufficient to achieve a good ef-
ficiency more than 21%.
4.5. Effect of CZTSSe absorber layer defect density
The optoelectronic properties of thin film semiconductor com-
pounds are significantly affected by defect states in bulk material and
interface (Yin et al., 2014). These defects may act as recombination
centers for photogenerated carriers which affect the Voc and the con-
version efficiency of the solar device (Wei et al., 2019, Cai et al., 2019).
CZTSSe is naturally p-type conductivity attributed to a high population
of shallow acceptor-like (Romanyuk et al., 2019, Chen et al., 2010). It
contains large concentration of charged and neutral point defects. The
neutral point defects consist of anti-sites, vacancies and interstitials in
their unionized state (Chen et al., 2010, Lie et al., 2018, Erkan et al.,
2016, Li et al., 2018, Kim et al., 2018). The influence of defects states
on solar cell performance was quantitatively analysed in this step.
Keeping unchanged other input parameters, we varied only defect
density from 1013 cm−3 to 1019 cm−3. Fig. 9(a)-(d) illustrates the
changes of Voc, Jsc, FF and η with the density of neutral defects. It can be
found that overall cell performance first remains constant when defect
density is less than 1016 cm−3, and then decrease dramatically with the
increase of Nt. When the defect density is equal to 1019 cm−3, the ef-
ficiency of CZTSSe TFSCs is only 3.13%. We notice that the density of
defect has a direct effect on the efficiency because; increase in the
density of defects means reduction in diffusion length of electrons and
holes and addition of recombination carrier in absorber layer.
4.6. Effect of working temperature on CZTSSe performance
Up to here, an ambient temperature of 300 K (25 °C) was used for all
previous simulation studies. However, as the solar panels are installed
out door; the operating temperature plays a vital role in the perfor-
mance of device. Thence sunlight will heat up the solar panels, and then
L. Et-taya, et al.
Fig. 9. Effect of defect density on the cell performances.
increasing the working temperature. Therefore, the PV cell panels often
operate at temperatures above 300 K. In this section, we have studied
the effect of working temperature on the CZTSSe device performance.
The simulation operating temperature was changed from 240 to 400 K
under a constant illumination of 1000 W/m2, by keeping other para-
meters constant. The simulation results of device parameters as a
function of temperature variation are shown in Fig. 10. It can be found
that, the overall device performance is affected with the increase of the
operating temperature
The temperature dependency of solar cell performance comes from
the dependency of Voc on temperature and accounts for 80–90% of
temperature coefficient of efficiency (Green, 2003). The rate of change
of Voc as a function of temperature is given by Eq (7) as:
d (Voc ) V Eg / q
= oc −
dT T T (7)
Fig. 10 illustrate that the increase in temperature cause decrease in
η, FF and Voc but increases in Jsc. This happens since at higher tem-
peratures, electrons in the device gain more energy and contribute to
more generation of electron-hole pairs which result in increased Jsc.
Electrons thermally excited at higher temperature start to vibrate and
become unstable and tend to recombine with holes before reaching the
depletion region and be collected (Khattak et al., 2018b). The term Eg / q
in Eq. (7) is always higher than the Voc, so the change in Voc due to rise
in temperature will always be negative, (i.e. Voc decreases as the tem-
perature of device rises). Due to higher temperature, the material
parameters such as band gaps, carrier concentration, and hole and
electron mobilities are affected, which result in a lower conversion ef-
ficiency of the cells (Nakada and Mizutani, 2002). As the temperature
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Solar Energy 201 (2020) 827–835
increases, from Eq. (7) there is a decrease in Voc and the reverse sa-
turation current rises. Moreover, as Voc decreases, there is a simulta-
neous decrease in the efficiency. The temperature coefficient of the
conversion efficiency for CZTSSe TFSCs is found to be about −0.032%/
K, which indicate that the device is stable at a lower working tem-
perature.
5. CZTSSe TFSC simulation and comparison with the experimental
case
For the comparison of experimental results with simulation results,
the thickness of ZnO:Al is set to 300 nm and the defect at the interface
between CdS and CZTSSe of value Nt = 1015 cm−2 is added. Fig. 11
shows current density versus voltage characteristic of simulation results
and experimental results obtained from Ref (Yang et al., 2016) of
CZTSSe solar cell. As one can see, the simulation results are in good
agreement with experimental data. Table 2 presents results of quanti-
tative comparison of physical parameters of experimental case with
those of simulated and optimized design.
6. Conclusion
In conclusion, inexpensive and earth abundant kesterite with a
Zno:Al/i-Zno/CdS/CZTSSe/Mo structure is numerically simulated by
using SCAPS-1D software. To obtain acceptable numerical results, we
have calculated the absorption coefficient of all layers from SE results
which used during the simulation. The third-generation solar cell is
optimized for various controllable parameters that affect the perfor-
mances like composition, thickness, defect density and working
L. Et-taya, et al. Solar Energy 201 (2020) 827–835

Fig. 10. Effect of working temperature on CZTSSe performances.

Table 2
Functional parameters of experimental, simulated and optimized CZTSSe solar
cell.
Cell/parameter Voc (V) Jsc (mA/cm2) FF (%) η (%)

CZTSSe (Experimental) 0.521 34.98 67.2 12.3

CZTSSe (simulation) 0.524 35.2 66.64 12.3
CZTSSe (optimized) 0.71 39.85 74.9 21.2

−0.032%/K. The optimal results have been achieved with η = 23.16%,

Voc = 0.724 V, Jsc = 42.64 mA/cm2 and FF = 74.96%, for × = 0.4
and d = 3000 nm. This article states that by adding interface defect
between Cd and CZTSSe and adjusting the thickness our result show
good agreement with experimental data. In addition, the efficiency of
CZTSSe can be improved from 12.3% to 21.2% for the optimized
structure. The simulation based on this report will be helpful to fabri-
cate higher efficiency CZTSSe based third-generation solar cells.

Fig. 11. Comparison of J-V characteristics obtained from our simulation results
with experimental results of Ref (Yang et al., 2016) and optimized results for
CZTSSe solar cell.
temperature within the experimentally permissible ranges. We found
that the optimized S ratio and thickness of CZTSSe should be 40%
S + Se
and from 1800 to 3000 nm, respectively. Moreover, results reveal the
importance of controlling the density of defect under 1016 cm−3 in
order to achieve excellent output performances of TFSCs, which can be
obtained by controlling the fabrication methods. The temperature
coefficient of the conversion efficiency is calculated to be about
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influ-
ence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgement
The authors gratefully acknowledge anonymous reviewers for their
insightful and constructive comments. We wish to thank Dr. Marc
Burgelman and their team from Gunt University Belgium for providing

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L. Et-taya, et al.
SCAPS simulator.
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