Investigating the Growth-Time Dependent Comparative Performance of Vapour-Liquid-Solid (VLS) Grown p-CuO/n-Si Thin Film Hetero-Junction Solar Cells

This work investigates the impact of growth time on the performance of p-CuO/n-Si hetero-junction solar cells, where CuO thin films are grown by employing vapour liquid solid method, using CBD synthesized CuO powder. Studies are performed in terms of the film morphology, chemical composition, crystallite structure, optical properties and energy conversion efficiency. The potential for photovoltaic applications of such films are investigated by measuring the p-CuO/n-Si diode current-voltage characteristics and by extracting its relevant photovoltaic parameters, including open circuit photo-generated voltage, short circuit current density and energy conversion efficiency.