The past five years have seen significant cost reductions in photovoltaics and a correspondingly strong increase in uptake, with photovoltaics now positioned to provide one of the lowest-cost options for future electricity generation. What is becoming clear as the industry develops is that area-related costs, such as costs of encapsulation and field-installation, are increasingly important components of the total costs of photovoltaic electricity generation, with this trend expected to continue. Improved energy-conversion efficiency directly reduces such costs, with increased manufacturing volume likely to drive down the additional costs associated with implementing higher efficiencies. This suggests the industry will evolve beyond the standard single-junction solar cells that currently dominate commercial production, where energy-conversion efficiencies are fundamentally constrained by Shockley–Queisser limits to practical values below 30%. This Review assesses the overall prospects for a range of approaches that can potentially exceed these limits, based on ultimate efficiency prospects, material requirements and developmental outlook.

在过去的五年中，光伏技术的成本大大降低，吸收能力也相应增加，现在光伏技术已定位为未来发电提供最低成本的选择之一。随着行业的发展，越来越明显的是，与面积相关的成本，例如封装和现场安装的成本，已成为光伏发电总成本中越来越重要的组成部分，并且这种趋势有望继续。提高的能量转换效率直接降低了此类成本，而增加的制造量可能会降低与实现更高效率相关的额外成本。这表明该行业的发展将超越目前主导商业生产的标准单结太阳能电池，那里的能量转换效率从根本上受到了Shockley-Queisser的限制，限制为低于30％的实际值。这篇综述基于最终的效率前景，材料要求和发展前景，评估了可能超出这些限制的一系列方法的总体前景。