Photovoltaics in Hybrid Superconductor/Semiconductor Structures**

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Finite resources of fuel energy, global warming and climate change, sustainability and green energy supply are the main drives for solar cell technology. Solar cell market has witnessed an exponential growth from 1992 to 2017 and it cumulative capacity reached about 401Gigawatts estimated to be sufficient for about 2.1% of global electricity demand. However, a solar cell efficiency, the ability of the cell to convert sunlight to electricity, has not been improved more than about 30% over the last 45 years of active research on solar cell technology. Improving the conversion efficiency will not only affect the cost but also compensate the intermittency of sunlight to store electricity. ****In this project, Majedi's group with a support of Callisto Integration will design a new solar cell based on superconducting ceramic on top of conventional silicon solar cell to increase the conversion efficiency beyond the physical limit of silicon single junction that is about 32%. This design is based on ultra wide band optical absorption on YBCO ceramic and its cryogenic operation to mitigate the thermal losses in conventional solar cell. This new solar cell will lead the researchers to come up with new physics and engineering design for the new generation of silicon solar cells.**