On Monday, April 28, 2025, at 11:00 a.m. in Room 0.06, the Jerzy Pniewski and Leopold Infeld Colloquium of the Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw, will take place.

The lecture entitled

"Photovoltaics – Current Status, Technologies, and Market Outlook"

will be given by

Eicke R. Weber, Prof. Emeritus, European Solar Manufacturing Council & UC Berkeley.

Energy production worldwide is increasingly based on photovoltaics. What is the current stage of development of photovoltaic technologies? What are their market prospects? These and other questions will be addressed in the lecture by Prof. Weber, who has been involved in photovoltaics since the beginning of its dynamic development in recent decades.

The lecture will be held in English.

Before the Colloquium, starting at 10:30 a.m., we warmly invite you to join us for informal discussions over coffee and cake in the hall in front of Room 0.06.

You are very welcome to attend! Warm regards.

Barbara Badełek
Jan Chwedeńczuk
Jan Kalinowski
Jan Suffczyński

Abstract:

Photovoltaics – Current Status, Technologies, and Market Outlook

Eicke R. Weber
Prof. emerit., MSME, UC Berkeley
Chair, EU PV Domestic Production Portfolio Initiative (DPP)
Former Director, Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, Freiburg

The global Photovoltaic (PV) market experienced consistent growth in the last decades, that can well be called unparalleled. Since 1992 it is achieving an average annual growth rate above 30%!

PV technology will continue to grow in energy conversion efficiency at ever falling cost. We started with the old industry standard PV technology, based on crystalline Si wafers, and characterized by an Al backsurface contact on a p-Si wafer. About 10 years ago this was replaced by Passivated Emitter and Rear Contact technology (PERC), where the wafer backside is covered by a well-passivating layer. Now we are at the brink of the third generation of c-Si PV technologies. There are fundamentally two third-generation technologies available, called TOPCON, because of the ultrathin tunneling oxide backside, and heterojunction, HjT, based on doped amorphous Si on both sides of the wafer. These technologies hold promise to increase solar energy conversion efficiencies towards 27%.

Beyond this, fourth-generation Si PV technologies will be needed, employing tandem structures with different band gaps, such Perovskite/Si or compound semiconductor/Si tandems. These structures are under development in many laboratories worldwide.

This decade will show who will be the winning technologies in the global multi-Terawatt market that we will witness at the end of this decade! We will discuss the current and emerging PV technology generations, and the growing markets for PV cells and modules.