The effect of HTM on the performance of solid-state dye-sanitized solar cells (SDSSCs): a SCAPS-1D simulation study

In this paper, we have investigated the performance of solid-state dye-sensitized solar cells (SDSSCs) fabricated from four different hole transport materials (HTMs) through SCAPS-1D simulation. Two organic and two inorganic HTM layers are examined in this study. The structure of SDSSC employed in this work is composed of FTO/TiO2/N719/HTM/Au and only the HTM layer is changed for each simulation. The materials employed as HTM are PEDOT:PSS, Spiro-OMETAD, CuI, and CuSCN. In each case, the VOC, JSC, FF, PCE, and quantum efficiency parameters are analyzed. The effects of HTM type and thickness, temperature and hole concentration on different parameters of the SDSSCs are compared with each other. The results indicate that using CuI as HTM yields better performance in comparison with other HTMs and can reach an efficiency of 17.72%. The simulation results can be used to make a comparison between organic and inorganic HTMs and also to improve the parameters of conductive polymers with secondary doping and to fabricate optimized SDSSCs in laboratory and industrial scales.