The next generation of photovoltaic cells: Emerging materials, efficiency improvement strategies, and sustainability pathways

Abstract

Photovoltaics (PV) have taken centre stage in the world’s clean-energy transition. As of 2023, the cumulative installed capacity is more than 1.6 TW with a projection of over 6 TW by 2030. In the last 25 years, there have been extraordinary increases in conversion efficiency, making crystalline silicon cells the highest efficiency (over 26%), thin-film CdTe and CIGS devices the highest efficiency (over 23%), and perovskite cells the highest efficiency (over 26%). In addition, new tandem architectures have already crossed the 33% mark. The given review is a comparative overview of the first, second, and third-generation PV technologies, critically examining the leading strategies for efficacy enhancement, i.e., the management of the optical, the state of the cell design, the thermal control, and the optimization with the help of artificial intelligence. Several issues persist: operational instability when working in the real world, the toxicity of some materials, the lack of certain critical raw elements, and the high manufacturing cost. Future solar technologies will also incorporate a combination of environmentally friendly materials, some principles of the circular economy, and the concepts of multiple applications, like agrivoltaics, floating PV, and building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV). Finally, the AI-enabled design and predictive digital twins will redesign the scalability and robustness of sustainable PV systems, ensuring the role of solar energy as one of the key pillars of the net-zero transition.