Effect on green energy conversion and stability with 'Er' modification in multiferroic based perovskite solar cell devices

Multiferroic Er-doped BiFeO3 (BFO) as an absorber is investigated very first time in the perovskite solar cell (PSC) devices via computational approach. The tailored bandgap of Er-doped BFO as 2.30 eV, 1.76 eV, 1.72 eV, and 1.70 eV with respective compositions i.e, BFO, BFO-4%Er, BFO-8%Er and BFO-12%Er were used to design the four devices with cell configuration FTO/ETL/Absorber/Spiro-OMeTAD/Au. The proposed devices were opti-mized with the intention to achieve better device performance. Further, the effect on various photovoltaic pa-rameters of the designed devices with respect to thickness and defect density of absorber, series and shunt resistance, and devices operating temperature were studied. Moreover, the quantum efficiency (QE) of devices for different thickness of absorber and electron transport layer was explored. Finally, the different ETLs such as TiO2, SnO2, ZnO, IGZO and PCBM are considered in order to select appropriate ETL for the final simulated proposed device configuration. The temperature effect on the devices confirms the better stability. Subsequently, the designed PSC devices displayed the maximum PCE of 13.49% along with Voc, Jsc and FF of 0.79 V, 22.18 mV/ cm2 and 76.13% respectively, for BFO-12%Er based PSC device with ZnO as ETL. It is supposed that if we would be competent to get such output with the BFO based multiferroics in the laboratory then such stable materials output may be used as a potential contender for greatly competent absorbing materials in PSC device applications.