Optical Nanostructures and Advanced Materials for Photovoltaics (PV)

Photovoltaic solar electricity is one of the key technologies for reducing the world's reliance on fossil fuels for energy generation. Reduced costs and higher conversion efficiencies are essential for making photovoltaics economically competitive. Optical nanostructures have a major role to play in improving the efficiency of solar cells by increasing the absorption of incident light, especially for thin-film applications. Solar concentrator systems, organic solar cells and dye-sensitized cells also stand to benefit from nanophotonic engineering schemes. This meeting aims to bring together experts from the fields of nanophotonics and photovoltaics to address the issues and opportunities for merging these two technologies. The scope of the meeting covers all aspects of optical nanostructures for photovoltaic applications, from textured surfaces and diffraction gratings through to emerging areas such as plasmonic enhancement, spectrally split multiple cells and spectral flux management in multijunction solar cells