Numerical and experimental indication of thermally activated tunneling transport in CIS monograin layer solar cells

The purpose of this work was to build a numerical model of thermally activated tunneling transport by upgrading the drift-diffusion transport model in one-dimensional semiconductor simulator ASPIN, and to identify the current limiting mechanisms of the CIS monograin layer solar cells. The superposition of the classical drift-diffusion transport and the semi-classical thermionic-field transport is applied across the whole solar cell structure. The implemented model correctly predicts the shapes of temperature dependent current density–voltage characteristics and the temperature dependence of the photogenerated current density at the short-circuit condition in the range from 320 K down to 160 K.