As clearly seen in Table 4, organic PV cells have a natural advantage over other types of PV cells due to their transparent characteristics, which make them ideal for integration with building-integrated photovoltaics, such as windows.
The history of PV cells can be traced back to the late 19 th century, when the French physicist Alexandre-Edmond Becquerel discovered the phenomenon of the photovoltaic effect. 18,19 He observed that certain materials, when exposed to light, produced a small electrical current. This was the first step in the development of PV technology.
The first generation of photovoltaic cells includes materials based on thick crystalline layers composed of Si silicon. This generation is based on mono-, poly-, and multicrystalline silicon, as well as single III-V junctions (GaAs) [17, 18]. Comparison of first-generation photovoltaic cells :
We also present the latest developments in photovoltaic cell manufacturing technology, using the fourth-generation graphene-based photovoltaic cells as an example.
However, there are still numerous challenges before photovoltaics can provide cleaner and low-cost energy. Research in this direction is focused on efficient photovoltaic devices such as multi-junction cells, graphene or intermediate band gap cells, and printable solar cell materials such as quantum dots .
There are four main categories that are described as the generations of photovoltaic technology for the last few decades, since the invention of solar cells : First Generation: This category includes photovoltaic cell technologies based on monocrystalline and polycrystalline silicon and gallium arsenide (GaAs).