Materials and Prospects of Novel Solar Cells

School of Material Science and Engineering, BeiHua University, 132000 Jilin, China

^* Corresponding author: clccpsp.clsh@sinopec.com

Abstract

As industrial standards continue to grow, the demand for traditional energy sources is on the rise, the solar energy is clean and non-polluting, renewable energy sources. Solar cells are devices that can convert sunlight directly into electricity. Solar cells have progressively established themselves as a research hotspot sought after by scholars in recent years. This paper summarizes the device structure, principle, development status and problems faced by the traditional silicon crystal solar cells and novel solar cells. In addition, this paper also compares the cost, advantages and disadvantages, and the highest efficiency of these several solar cells, analyzes the advantages of the traditional silicon-based solar cells, and the future development direction of several new solar cells. Finally, this paper concludes that silicon solar cells are still dominant in the market because of their outstanding power conversion efficiency (PCE) and stability. The novel solar cells with thin-film structures have high theoretical conversion efficiency and some other characteristics, so they will hopefully replace the traditional silicon solar cells in the future. However, stability, PCE and cost are currently the main challenges.