Background and Motivation for Thin-Film Solar-Cell Development

Abstract

Development of clean energy resources as an alternative to fossil fuels has become one of the most important tasks assigned to modern science and technology in the 21st century. As was well recognized after the Kyoto Protocol, the reason for this strong motivation is to stop air pollution resulting from the mass consumption of fossil fuels and to maintain the ecological cycles of the biosystems on the earth. In this chapter, firstly, the influences of the industrial developments of the energy revolutions since James Watt built the steam engine in the 18th century are examined and discussed. The evolution of the main energy resources from coal (solid), oil (liquid) and LNG, LPG (gas) are closely related not only to the economy of mass production, storage, and transportation but also to environmental issues. In the second section, a brief discussion is given on “the 3E Trilemma”, which might be the most important issue for civilization in the 21st century.