Solar Cells and Photovoltaics

Abstract

Photovoltaic solar cells are gaining wide acceptance for producing clean, renewable electricity. This has been based on more than 40 years of research that has benefited from the revolution in silicon electronics and compound semiconductors in optoelectronics. This chapter gives an introduction into the basic science of photovoltaic solar cells and the challenge of extracting the maximum amount of electrical energy from the available solar energy. In addition to the constraints of the basic physics of these devices, there are considerable challenges in materials synthesis. The latter has become more prominent with the need to reduce the cost of solar module manufacture as it enters mainstream energy production. The chapter is divided into sections dealing with the fundamentals of solar cells and then considering six very different materials systems, from crystalline silicon through to polycrystalline thin films and perovskites. These materials have been chosen because they are all either in production or have the prospect of being in production over the next few years. Many more materials are being considered in research and some of the more exciting, excitonic cells and nanomaterials are mentioned. However, there is insufficient space to give these very active areas of research the justice they deserve. I hope the reader will feel sufficiently inspired by this topic to read further and explore one of the most exciting areas of semiconductor science. The need for high-volume production at low cost has taken the researcher along paths not normally considered in semiconductor devices and it is this that provides an exciting challenge.