Inorganic photovoltaic cells: Operating principles,technologies and efficiencies - review

The search for new alternatives to fossil energies has pioneered the development of green energies. since the seventies,solar energy due to its abundance has been one of the main renewable energies that received tremendous efforts in terms of research in the fields of chemistry,engineering and physics. this is driven by the fact that the energy striking the surface of the earth in one hour is enough to power the planet for an entire year. therefore,no other renewable energy sources have such a capacity to meet all the planet's energy needs for the foreseeable future. nowadays,the majority of commercial solar cells are based on the inorganic photovoltaic technology which utilizes a silicon wafer in either single-crystal or polycrystalline form for light absorption and a p-n junction for charge separation. in this paper,the solar energy is described and quantified,along with a review of semiconductor properties,photovoltaic conversion operations and the basic inorganic photovoltaic cells technologies. particular attention is given to p-n junction,including losses and shockley-queisser limit. crystalline silicon photovoltaic cell,thin film technologies and multijunction photovoltaic cells are described for the photovoltaic conversion. finally,structure devices and cell efficiencies are examined and discussed.