Open Access

ARTICLE

Engineering and Tuning of Absorber Layer Properties for High-Efficiency SnS-Based Solar Cells: A SCAPS-1D Simulation Study

Abla Guechi¹, Djohra Dekhil², Abdelhak Nouri^2,*

1 Laboratory of Optoelectronics and Components, Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Setif-1 University, Setif, 19000, Algeria
2 Laboratory of Photonics Systems and Nonlinear Optics, Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics, Setif-1 University, Setif, 19000, Algeria

* Corresponding Author: Abdelhak Nouri. Email:

Chalcogenide Letters 2026, 23(1), 6 https://doi.org/10.32604/cl.2026.076586

Received 23 September 2025; Accepted 23 November 2025; Issue published 26 January 2026

Abstract

This work uses numerical modeling in SCAPS-1D to examine the efficiency analysis of a solar cell based on SnS. The power conversion efficiency (PCE) is limited to 24.5% because of incomplete photon absorption in the absorber layer (SnS) and carrier recombination. To increase the absorption window, facilitate charge mobility, and suppress bulk recombination at the rear contact, the absorbent film was divided up into three sublayers with graded band gaps of 1.1 eV, 1.2 eV, and 1.3 eV. Furthermore, the sublayers’ linear gradient doping improved charge collection while simultaneously lowering recombination at the interface. A compromise between photon absorption and carrier extraction is made possible by this physical and geometrical optimization of the standard cell. It also reveals that the optimal sublayer thicknesses are 500 nm for SnS-1, 500 nm for SnS-2, and 1600 nm for SnS-3, which allows a sharp improvement in PCE of 28.45%. Furthermore, further optimization by adjusting the thickness of the absorbent underlays achieves an efficiency of 31.5% with a significant fill factor (FF) of 86.6%. These results confirm that the physical and geometrical optimization (thickness, band gap, charge distribution) of solar cell based SnS thin films has an important contribution in the improvement of the efficiency of cells.

---

Keywords

---