In the past decade, the price of energy produced through photovoltaics has dropped by a factor of 10. According to the World Energy Outlook 2020, solar has overtaken non-renewable sources as the cheapest form of new electricity available. Although the basic principle is well understood and effective on the industrial scale there is a still a large market for optimizing the efficiency of solar cells. In autonomous vehicles for example it may make sense to pay a premium to meet the energy budget in a smaller form factor. New techniques that are able to provide a few percent improvement in efficiency by employing novel materials, or nanostructures would have a large impact.
Understand the basic physics and workflow through our planar Si cell and methodology pages. Take it further by looking at III-V, or organic material stacks. Enhance the interactions using a grating or plasmonic nanoparticles. The effects of nano structured surfaces like pillars, pyramids, or moth-eye AR(anti-reflection) coatings are also studied