Novel Material Architectures for Photovoltaics

In this paper, an analysis is make on what can be a long-term and fruitful direction in which the new material architecture for photovoltaics may logically evolve during the next couple of decades. In spite of great advances, all of the PV material systems that are currently being developed have problems that need to be solved. Therefore, the search for new material systems will continue. It isreasonable to expect that the next generation of materials is likely to come from ternary and multinary semiconductors belonging to a class of tetrahedrally bonded diamond-like compounds. These are most promising because of their close similarity with traditional semiconductors with respect to their composition, crystal structure, nature of chemical bonds, and electronic structures.