Investigation into the inverted planer perovskite solar cell: Advances of PANI:PSS as a hole transport material

The study explores the impact of PANI:PSS as a hole transport material in perovskite based solar cell. Numerical analysis employing the SCAPS-1D simulator is conducted to track this impact. 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 power conversion efficiency (PCE) obtained is 4.94%, which agrees well with the reported experimental results in the literature. Increasing the charge carrier density of PANI:PSS from \(1\times {10}^{12}\) $1\times {10}^{12}$ cm⁻³ to 1 \(\times {10}^{22}\) $\times {10}^{22}$ cm⁻³ paved the solar cell toward high performance revealing \({V}_{OC}\) $V_{\mathit{OC}}$ of 0.7 V, \({J}_{SC}\) $J_{\mathit{SC}}$ of 21.7 mA/cm², FF of 43% and \(PCE\) $\mathit{PCE}$ 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 \(1\times {10}^{13}\) $1\times {10}^{13}$ cm⁻³ to 1 \(\times {10}^{22}\) $\times {10}^{22}$ cm⁻³. Furthermore, increasing the shunt resistance of the device enhances cell performance, potentially due to the creation of alternative paths for 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.