Simulation and analysis of multiple transparent conducting oxides in solar cells and a review of solar energy market potential and trend review
Abstract
Indium tin oxide is highly regarded as the best transparent conducting oxide for
solar cell use due to its versatility and excellent electrical and optical properties. A
lot of research has explored potential substitutes for indium tin oxide due to
indium’s scarcity and the demand and overuse of liquid crystal display technology
manufacturing. A new emerging substitute, molybdenum zinc oxide, is a widebandgap transparent conducting oxide. In this paper, the highest value observed
for the bandgap was 3.43 eV. Thus, this new film shows promising optical
properties with a high average transmittance of 84%–87% throughout the visible
light region, and it shows exceptionally good electrical properties with a
conductivity as high as 168067.2269 Siemens due to the new molybdenum doping
for zinc oxide.
In this paper, the following various optical and electrical properties are examined
and simulated through MATLAB: absorption coefficient, absorbance, reflectance,
transmittance, optical bandgap, refractive index, resistivity, conductivity and sheet
resistance. This research aims to observe the new molybdenum zinc oxide’s
performance with the different molybdenum doping concentrations to see how
molybdenum affects the performance of zin oxide, and to compare it against the
best transparent conducting oxide to date, indium tin oxide. This paper observes
how the un-doped base forms zinc oxide for the optical properties and compares
the same materials when adding it to other popular zinc oxide dopants for the
electrical properties.
Keywords: Photovoltaic solar cells, Indium Tin Oxide, Transparent conducting
oxide, Molybdenum Zinc oxide, wide-bandgap semiconductor.