Renewable Energy: Solar Cells and Materials

During past few years, even with the world economic recession, the market for photovoltaics has continued to grow. In Europe and Asia the market has expanded from the MW to the GW scale. The worldwide installed photovoltaic electricity generation capacity is approximately 15GW. In the first half of 2009 the financial investment in the photovoltaic industry decreased by 47% compared to the second half of 2008, but the investment in the second half of 2009 was 83% greater than the first half of the same year. In parallel to the development of the photovoltaic market, during the last 10 years there has been a sustained effort in photovoltaic R & D related to the increase of the cell efficiency, the development of new materials and the improvement of the properties of known materials.

Today there is a great interest and research concerning to first generation solar cells, based on mono and poly-crystalline silicon, second generation cells, including thin film cadmium telluride, CdTe, CIGS, amorphous silicon, micro-crystalline and proto-silicon, third generation cells, based on the use of quantum dots, nanowires, carbon nanotubes, photo-electrochemical cells, polymer solar cells, nano-crystalline cells, dye-sensitized cells.

The symposium of Renewable Energy: solar cells and materials, has the aim to provide a forum to present and discuss the research of the subjects presented above. The symposium has an oral session and a posters session designed to promote the exchange of the advances in this field by the participants.