Has the era of PV 3.0 arrived?

According to calculations, one hour of solar radiation on the earth is enough energy to power the world for a whole year. Since the Second Industrial Revolution, mankind has been experimenting with how to harness solar energy. 1839 saw the discovery of the photovoltaic effect by French physicists; 1876 saw the discovery by British scientists that electricity could be generated by shining sunlight on a selenium semiconductor; and 1893 saw the manufacture of the world's first solar cell by American engineers, which, although only 1% efficient, was a leap forward.

Edmond Becquerel, the first French physicist to discover the photovoltaic effect

Today, more than a century after the introduction of solar cells, the average conversion efficiency of commercial solar cells is still low, and the complex and costly manufacturing process has largely limited their application in various fields. Fortunately, recent years have seen a series of positive developments in the field of photovoltaics, with breakthroughs in the efficiency of a new generation of solar cells, and scientists firmly believe that the era of photovoltaics 3.0 is upon us.

A common silicon-based solar cell is a P-type and N-type semiconductor material joined to form a PN junction, which forms a hole-electron pair when sunlight hits the panel, and a circuit is switched on to produce an electric current. Currently 90% of all solar panels are silicon-based. The most critical material for the production of solar panels is silicon, which is abundant on earth, but to make solar panels it must be purified to a purity of 99.9999% or more. This inevitably leads to the whole process of producing silicon-based solar panels being complex, polluting and costly. So silicon-based solar panels are not a sensible choice for photovoltaic power generation. A new generation of Calcium Titanium Ore cells has emerged, which not only offers a huge increase in conversion efficiency, but is also much simpler and more efficient to produce, and thin enough that a half bottle of Calcium Titanium Ore liquid can power an entire house, and most crucially, it is very cheap to produce!

So what is a calcium titanite solar panel?

By chalcogenide, we are actually referring to any of the ABX3 compounds with a crystal structure similar to chalcogenide, which is widely distributed throughout the earth. Chalcogenide solar panels are not sensitive to impurities and a conversion efficiency of over 20% can be achieved with a purity of around 90%.

As a compound its composition can be adjusted so that different layers of chalcogenide can be created for different wavelengths of incoming light, which can significantly increase the conversion efficiency of the photovoltaic. In contrast to silicon-based solar panels, chalcogenide can have multiple layers of PN junctions, which allows the efficiency of chalcogenide panels to be stacked. In theory, chalcogenide can achieve a conversion efficiency of up to 86.8%, but the more layers there are the higher the manufacturing costs will be and the lower the commercial returns will inevitably be, so the main consideration for commercial chalcogenide panels from the laboratory is to stack the layers twice, which is the real selling point of chalcogenide.

In fact, scientists have been working on chalcogenide for more than a decade, but due to the instability of its crystal structure and its short lifespan, no substantial progress was made until June this year, when researchers at Princeton University announced that they had developed the first commercially viable chalcogenide solar cell, marking an important milestone in human research into renewable energy. The World Economic Forum has also named calcium titanium ore as one of the "10 emerging technologies that will change human life".