Abstract: This work presents current advances and perspectives on SnSe thin film solar cell technology. Nowadays, SnSe solar cells have not been able to achieve efficiency values higher than 7%. In this sense, it is necessary to study the potentiality of SnSe compound in solar cells that could help to understand further routes to promote this technology. It is demonstrated that efficiencies about 25% are expected under the ideal conditions of a low density of defects at SnSe bulk, the SnSe/buffer interface and the use of a buffer layer with a high band-gap, so that most photons get absorbed in the SnSe material with a good lattice matching to the SnSe and the negligible contribution of resistances. The comparison of our results with the one experimentally reported demonstrates that Jsc values constitute the first main issue to be solved in this technology.

Key words: SnSe solar cells, theoretical calculations, radiative limit, limiting factors