New Materials, Processes, and Cell Designs for Emerging Photovoltaic Technology

光伏（PV）装置——太阳能电池——是为数不多的能够在全球范围内生产安全、清洁、可再生能源的技术之一，对任何遏制化石燃料使用的努力都将至关重要。在过去的四十年里，基于多晶硅的设备一直是光伏市场的主导技术。然而，最近的研究表明，两种新型材料——有机半导体和卤化铅钙钛矿——可用于生产太阳能电池，大大降低了成本和能源投入。不幸的是，这两种材料的商业潜力目前是有限的；有机光伏器件（opv）的功率转换效率不到传统硅器件的一半，而钙钛矿太阳能电池（PSCs）对水分和光线敏感，导致器件寿命极短。

Photovoltaic (PV) devices - solar cells - are one of the few technologies capable of producing safe, clean, renewable energy on a global scale, and will be crucial to any effort to curb the use of fossil fuels. For the past four decades, devices based on multi-crystalline silicon have been the dominant technology in the PV marketplace. However, recent work has shown that two new classes of materials - organic semiconductors and lead halide perovskites - can be used to produce solar cells with dramatically reduced costs and energy inputs. Unfortunately, the commercial potential of these two materials is currently limited; organic photovoltaic devices (OPVs) have a power conversion efficiency that is less than half that of conventional silicon devices, while perovskite solar cells (PSCs) suffer from a sensitivity to moisture and light, leading to extremely short device lifetimes.