A comprehensive review on solar photovoltaics: Navigating generational shifts, innovations, and sustainability
Bibliographic record
Abstract
• The recent breakthroughs in solar PV technology were reviewed. • Recent innovations in enhancing energy harvesting were explored. • The environmental impact of solar PV was investigated. • Recycling processes of different solar cells were examined. The consumption of fossil fuels presents a combined issue of environmental degradation and depletion of the current limited resources. In this context, solar photovoltaic (PV) technology provides a fundamental component in the global shift towards addressing climate change, reducing harmful emissions, and supporting sustainable energy alternatives. In order to recognize the growth of this technology, this study conducts an investigation and exploration, covering recent improvements in solar PV. The paper provides a comprehensive overview for researchers seeking an up-to-date summary of the current status of this technology. Perovskite/Silicon and III-V/Silicon tandem cells currently possess the highest efficiency, with a record-breaking achievement of 34.6 % and 36.1 % in recent research. Furthermore, both Perovskite and tandem cells exhibit the most reasonable energy payback time (EPBT) and levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) at the laboratory scale in comparison to conventional solar cells. Perovskite/Perovskite tandem cells showed the lowest LCOE and EPBT among all other types of cells by $0.042/kWh and 0.2 to 0.4 years, respectively. The integration of bifacial and tracking systems has the potential to enhance productivity by approximately 30 %, and 20 to 57 %, respectively, depending on the tracking technology and study location. Nevertheless, the use of materials like Pb, Sn, Cd, and Te requires careful management due to their potential harmful effect on human health, especially during recycling, decommissioning, and manufacturing processes. Although third-generation and tandem solar cells show promise, they necessitate additional research to tackle issues such as costly manufacturing, scalability, stability, and durability.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".