Symposium FG
Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conversion: Silicon and Beyond

The direct conversion of solar energy to electricity by photovoltaic devices has already emerged as a technologically and economically viable solution to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels for power generation. At the end of May 2012 Germany became the first industrialised country where the total amount of power generated by photovoltaic plants exceeds 50% of the electricity distributed by the national grid at peak time.
Wafer-based crystalline Si is still the dominant technology for solar cells and it is expected to retain a dominant position for at least 5 to 10 more years thanks to the impressive acceleration in production capacity and cost reduction (<0.5€/Wp) achieved by top Chinese manufacturers.
However thin film technologies based on CdTe, Cu(InGa)Se2 (CIGS), amorphous/micromorph Silicon and nano/micro/poly-Si are becoming increasingly competitive from the economic point of view and might rapidly secure a significant share of the market thanks to their superior performance in building integrated applications.
Dye-sensitized and organic solar cells are also progressing in terms of efficiency and lifetime and are expected to pave the way to very-low-cost and do-it-yourself photovoltaics.
Finally, to push the current efficiency limit from 43% towards and possibly beyond the 50% mark nano-architectured solar cells have been proposed to exploit a whole range of new physical effects like intermediate bands, multiple exciton generation, hot carriers and up/down conversion.
In all these fields the unprecedented synergy between industrial and basic research over the last 10 years have boosted the whole photovoltaic sector. As a result cost targets set in 2008 where achieved 5 to 10 years earlier than expected and grid parity is already happening in many parts of the world.
The International Symposium “Photovoltaic Solar Cell Conversion: Materials and Technology Challenges” will focus on the most recent advances in the photovoltaic technologies.
Materials science, synthesis, deposition techniques, device architecture and physics, characterisation and tests, process and product innovation, large-area deposition and diagnostics and manufacturing will be the top scientific and technological keywords of the symposium.
A special session will be devoted to Building Integrated Photovoltaics with particular attention to product innovation, multifunctionality and to the technical issues related to the integration of photovoltaic modules in architectural structures. With the end of the feed-in tariff incentives, this sector is expected to take off and become soon a major segment of the overall PV market as domestic and commercial buildings are responsible for about 2/3 of the electricity demand in industrialised countries.