Materials for Photovoltaics Application

At the present scenario, mankind will be facing a serious global issue where the renewable energy demand will be doubled within the next 50 years. Fossil fuels, however, are almost running out and are held responsible for the increased concentration of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere. Hence, developments of environment friendly, clean, sustainable renewable energy sources are one of the growing challenges of our society in the 21st century. Ever-increasing world energy demand, depleting non-renewable energy resources and disruptive climate change due to greenhouse gases has aroused much interest in alternative renewable energy sources. In this context, solar energy harvesting is one of the best available alternatives, since it is abundant and clean. Currently, most solar cells are based on crystalline silicon, which is costly and scarce. Recently, numbers of emerging photovoltaic technologies, such as organic solar cells, perovskite solar cells, quantum dot (QD) solar cells, and dye-sensitized solar cells have been growing rapidly and are promising research candidates in academia and industry. Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have attracted broad attention as an emerging photovoltaic technology with fast-developing speed for high efficiency, low-cost and solution-processable features. Flexible fabrication of PSCs will minimize the processing cost and maximize its manufacture advantages.