Recent Advances on Photovoltaics and Solar Cells

Dear Colleagues,

Novel high-performance optoelectrical materials with robust photoelectric conversion are highly desired for applications in solar cells. Though significant progress involving traditional semiconductor materials has been made in recent decades, breakthroughs, from the point of view of conversion efficiency based on the novel materials or novel principles, still require improvements toward high-performance solar cell devices. Recently, the newly emerging low-dimensional solar cell materials, including the two-dimensional layered structures, conventional or artificially tuned ferroic-based thin films, organic/inorganic perovskite, and some outstanding semiconductor-based solar cell materials are obtained extensive attention and wide investigation. However, these material systems are also facing intrinsic or extrinsic factors limiting the conversion of efficiency, including the preparation technique of material growth, optical/electrical-characterization techniques for the complicate defects in materials and devices, and the in situ monitoring techniques of the carrier recombination/transport dynamics, and even the device structural optimizations.

This Special Issue will provide a feast for systematically reporting the comprehensive research progress on the application of all kinds of solar cell materials, especially for revealing the efficiency bottleneck of the corresponding solar cell structures, which, on the one hand, guides the researchers for high-performance solar cells, and, on the other hand, push the exploring of novel solar materials and novel cell structures. We invite authors to contribute original research articles and review articles covering the current progress on semiconductor-, ferroic-, perovskite-, and low-dimensional-based solar cells. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Exploring of novel semiconductor-based materials and solar cells.
• Ferroelectric photovoltaics.
• Perovskite solar cells.
• Two-dimensional layered solar cells with novel principles.
• Conventional or moire heterojunction solar cells.
• Thin film solar cells including Cu-based, e.g., CuZnSnS(Se) and Sb-based, e.g., Sb₂Se₃, and so on.

Prof. Dr. Fangyu Yue
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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• photovoltaic materials
• two-dimensional
• thin films
• ferroelectric
• perovskite
• solar cells