Exploring study for inverted planer perovskite solar cell: impact of PANI:PSS as a hole transport material

Abstract This study explores the impact of PANI:PSS as a hole transport material in the perovskite based solar cell. This impact is tracked by numerical analysis using the one-dimensional solar cell capacitance simulator (SCAPS-1D). The effect of tuning several physical parameters of PANI:PSS, such as charge carrier density, charge carrier mobility, and defect density, on the solar cell performance, were analyzed and discussed. In addition, the role of the shunt and series resistance is investigated. The initial obtained power conversion efficiency is 4.94%, which agrees well with the reported experimental results in the literature. Increasing the charge carrier density of PANI:PSS from \(1\times {10}^{12}\) cm-3 to 1\(\times {10}^{22}\) cm-3 paved the solar cell toward high performance revealing \({V}_{OC}\) of 0.7 V, \({J}_{SC}\) of 21.7 mA/cm2, FF of 43% and \(PCE\) of 7.44%. Increasing the charge carrier mobility of PANI:PSS implied undesirable performance, with a stable performance above mobility of 50 cm2/Vs. The high defect density of PANI-PSS showed a harsh effect on the device performance. The efficiency decreased by 62% upon increasing the defect density from \(1\times {10}^{13}\) cm-3 to 1\(\times {10}^{22}\) cm-3. Finally, increasing the shunt resistance of the device is found to promote the cell’s performance. This could be due to the creation of alternative paths for the photogenerated charge carriers. Conversely, a huge drop in the solar cell performance is found upon increasing the series resistance due to a reduction of the current flow due to increasing the recombination rate.