ABSTRACT
To design and fabricate an efficient and stable solar cell, understanding the basic structure, working principles and limitations of photovoltaic cells is essential. Structure and working principles are rather simple compared to complicated semiconductor electronic chips. However, the device performance in terms of efficiency and long-term stability is closely related to device structures and their working principles. In this chapter, structures, working principles, and limitations of solar cells and methods for improving the powerconversion efficiency are described in detail. Solar cells are made from a variety of semiconductor materials, such as n-type, p-type, and intrinsic semiconductors. Basically, there are two main configurations of solar cells: p-n junction and non-p-n junction. Interfaces in stacked configurations are considered to be fundamentally important in designing highly efficient and operationally stable solar cells. The basic concept of concentrator solar cells is to use optics to concentrate sunlight on a smaller area of cells.
