Solar photovoltaics: Trends and prospects

Key areas in the development of photovoltaic methods of solar energy conversion, which open up wide prospects for semiconductor solar energy conversion, are discussed. The article focuses mainly on photovoltaic cells based on III-V heterostructures, primarily on cascade solar cells, which provide the highest efficiency of solar energy conversion and are produced by high-tech methods such as MBE or MOCVD. It is shown that the use of intermediate sunlight concentration makes the area of solar cells smaller and, hence, lowers their cost proportionally to the sunlight concentration ratio.